v0.25 - Custom effigy building! Multiplayer improvements, New fish types, new ocean! Fixes, balance, audio improvements and more

Hey Everyone,

 

We've thought for a long time that effigies are cool. It's really fun to kill an enemy, chop him up and make some art out of his body parts on the beach. However it's been limited to preset designs - we thought giving people total freedom in what they can construct would be a great feature, especially in multiplayer where you and a friend can create something unique together. So this patch we're introducing Custom effigy building! To start, select the Custom Effigy, it replaced the old Simple Effigy *(prebuilt effigies are still available for those not interested in designing their own) Once the basic custom effigy is constructed, find an enemy, chop his limbs off and bring the parts over to start building. Note - Even torsos work with this new system, and you can use sticks to further increase size of effigy.

 

This patch also introduces our new ocean. It's based on a new unity asset store plugin, however the creator has joined the team here and has been customizing it and helping us implement it. For those with lower end pc's we've included a 'Flat' ocean type in options menu which will let you switch to the simpler looking old ocean.

 

Audio has seen some more improvements and additions, most objects now react and have sounds when pushed.

 

For multiplayer we've changed the network interpolation delay and tweaked packet settings to (hopefully) smooth out the multiplayer experience. We've also fixed some additional bugs. Suitcases are much smoother to push as client, the metal doors are now working in mp, and breakable crates should now sync between players.

 

Enemies now have lod's added to them and we've improved how they use motion blur hopefully improving performance drops caused by enemies being near by.

 

Along with this there are also a load of other fixes, changes, gameplay balance and small art tweaks, for the full list check out below.

 

As always, please continue to post your bug reports and feedback in the Discussions area of the Community Hub

 

V0.25 Complete

 

  • New building: Custom Effigy - replaces 'Simple Effigy' in book (once built, use sticks to add to base shape and/or limbs and torsos to create effigies of your own ! Range and duration of the repulsive effect when lit depends on amount of added limbs)
  • New Ocean shader! Now has 3d waves and foam! - note - low, ultra low and fastest quality settings default to old ocean. This can be changed in quality settings
  • Player will now find themselves hung upside down when waking up in cave and will need to cut themselves free
  • New rain shader! *again - this time runs faster and looks better
  • Improved terrain water accumulation
  • (multiplayer) Animations now blend more smoothly for client players when attacking enemies.
  • (multiplayer) Fixed animation issues for client when mutants would die
  • (multiplayer) Fixed bug where cave enemies would sometimes ignore clients if client was far enough away from host player
  • (multiplayer) Lowered network interpolation delay for clients to improve responsiveness over network
  • (multiplayer) Metal doors are now correctly synced between players!
  • (multiplayer) Fixed head bombs not synced between players
  • (multiplayer) Fixed issue with grabbing items nearby a sled after looking at the sled picking up whatever is inside
  • (multiplayer) Breakable crates in overworld are now synced between players
  • (multiplayer) Improved suitcase syncing between players
  • (multiplayer) Fires don't give light for players that aren't around when first lit
  • (multiplayer) Fixed issue with scale of fire after loading a saved game in multiplayer
  • (multiplayer) Fixed some smaller issues with log/rock sled in multiplayer
  • (multiplayer) Fixed an issue that would occasionally stop players from connecting to a multiplayer game after already having joined one
  • (multiplayer) Fixed issue with effigies not always lighting up for clients or being lightable for clients
  • (multiplayer) Fixed animation issue that would happen when you were looking at another player dropping a corpse on the ground
  • (multiplayer) Fixed issue where suitcase 'lock' icon would always be visible even after suitcase had been opened
  • (multiplayer) Fixed Defensive Wall Reinforcement sometimes doubling up
  • (multiplayer) Fixed cutting tree sometimes not finalizing properly leaving a floating cut tree
  • Fixed bug where fire would sometimes be really big when first lit under some conditions
  • (audio) Axe, club and rock weapons now make impact sounds when hitting plane hull
  • (audio) Ambient sounds no longer briefly heard before plane crash starts
  • (audio) Echo added to sinkhole!
  • (audio) Increased footstep volume when running
  • (audio) Revised scream sounds to sync better with animations
  • (audio) Fixed inaudible drop sound on pre-placed dead mutant bodies. Fixed bat exit cave sound inaudible.
  • (audio) Fixed thunder playing effect twice when rain starts
  • (audio) Added water drips to rivers during rain
  • (audio) Added less full-on inhales for when coming up from underwater
  • (audio) Randomised offset to fire start time to stop audio distortion when building lots of fires close to each other
  • (audio) Sigh relief sound effect is now played when the player extinguishes being on fire by entering a water volume
  • (audio) Weapon clean sound now plays when entering water with a bloody weapon.
  • (audio) Suitcases, laptops, small pots, food carts and plane seats all have sounds now when pushed
  • (audio) Fixed suitcase smash sound sometimes playing twice when hit and distorting audio (audio) Tuned cliff, item push, and some player sounds
  • New art added: Blue tent (replaced placeholder blue tents)
  • Terrain shader improvements, faster rendering, better performance when raining and more tweaks
  • (balance) Increased lung breathing duration to 25s
  • (balance) Rebalanced all weapon speed/damage/block strength
  • (balance) Slightly lowered energy drain from swinging an axe
  • (balance) Stopped bombs and dynamite sliding as much after being thrown
  • (balance) Blocking with weapons no longer drains stamina
  • (balance) Bow max charge duration set to 2s (was 5s before) Now, release when visually the bow looks ready and you will fire a straight shot
  • (balance) Lowered speed of shell attack
  • (performance) New Mid level trees added
  • (performance) Mutants now have skinned lod meshes
  • (performance) Optimized animator on distant/not visible enemies and bodies
  • (performance) Lowered memory usage in render textures by about 200megs
  • (performance) Lakes and ponds are now fully disabled when far enough away
  • Fixed blood visible on screen during drag away cutscene
  • (UI) Added weapon block strength display to inventory item tooltip
  • Amount and type of enemies in the world will change over time depending on how many are killed
  • More trees now respond to wind!
  • Trees when cut no longer switch shaders -improving jump between cut and not cut meshes*still some improvements needed to make this totally seamless
  • Lighting weapons and projectiles now requires to hold the 'Lighter' button for half a second
  • Fixed suitcases around plane respawning at runtime when going back and forth to the plane
  • Fixed enemy placed art often being half underground, having wrong rock texture, or having items not pickupable when destroyed
  • Fixed strange shading on fire built model due to wrong occlusion map
  • (visuals) Improved look of lakes/ponds. Fixed mip mapping issues causing pixel distortion in distance. Better bump and fog settings. Brightened streams and improved bump/blend and reflections.
  • New enemy behaviour - mutants can sometimes be seen feeding on body parts in caves!
  • Fixed missing seaweed prefabs under water
  • Fixed weapon fire light having a really big range and lighting up entirety of caves!
  • Lowered brightness of player_net lighter
  • Blood particle effect made less shiny/metallic
  • Brightened colors on edible and spoilt fish, generic meat, rabbit, lizard materials to make difference between states clearer
  • Upped max arrow amount in inventory from 12 to 30
  • Multiple arrows can now be upgraded at once with a single bottle of booze
  • Fire arrows now look red in inventory
  • Fixed laptops being too dark and some still having old model linked in
  • Lowered chance of birds clumping onto perch targets on built items
  • Updated enemy cave layout in some caves
  • Improved some areas of cave collision to stop feet poking through
  • Fixed fullness not getting consumed while sleeping (so it behaves like thirst)
  • While sleeping both fullness and thirst can only be consumed up to a threshold, so that you never wake up on the verge of dying (unless you engaged sleeping in this state)
  • Sleeping is now limited to once per day (unless woken by enemies in which case it doesn't count towards this limit)
  • Shelter now shows remaining time until next sleep instead of action icon while the feature is locked (display is relative to 1 in game day, ie if the bar is 50% filled it means half a day remains before sleeping again)
  • Effigies now require to hold the "Take" button for 0.5s to set alight
  • Added lighter action icons to all effigies
  • Added more fire particles to molotov to make it look spread out more
  • Molotovs can now be used to fuel fires
  • Molotov no longer leave fire floating in the air when colliding mid air with something
  • Fixed Destroyed Tied Tongue effigy parts not being pickupable
  • Fixed birds perching on other birds
  • Fixed bug where bodies could not be placed in Log Sled when carrying rocks.
  • Fixed bug with terrain sand making it look 8-bit around beach area. Balanced look of sand.
  • Improved cave reflection cube map for underground lakes
  • Sun is now correctly blocked by thick clouds in sky
  • Added blend option for clouds and new overcast texture to simulate clouds/storms forming before rain
  • New base cloud texture!
  • New rope material/textures
  • New cave art added: Stalagmites and stalactite types
  • Fixed bug where you could open survival book whilst climbing rope
  • Fixed some issues with matching props/textures when switching to dummy on death
  • Fixed 3 sappling types missing texture on thin trunks
  • New gameplay option: 'Advanced controller support (XInput)' (required to use the game with a Steam Controller, it is off by default so check out options if you need it)
  • New gameplay option: 'Show projectile reticle'
  • New graphics option: Ocean Quality [Wave Displacement / Flat] Low, Fastest and Ultra Low quality presets use Flat ocean quality by default.
  • New texture added for cannibal carry away timmy
  • New art added - replacement rocky/dirt ground texture
  • It is no longer possible to drink (from ponds/Lakes) while moving
  • Ensured better randomness of plane crash site roll
  • Cave 1 - fixed seam in floor, fixed distortion in parts of floor. Raised rocks in flooded room. lighting improvements, more walls replaced with mineral wall type
  • Graded ground textures to match values in trunks closer
  • Less electric green in tree moss
  • New fish models and types added!
  • Fish are now killable with regular weapons and explosives (hitting them with axe is pretty fun but probably way overpowered currently)
  • Fixed spamming the 'Lighter' action with a fire arrow equipped creating several fires over time (could eventually cause fire to stay on forever and enemies to get caught on fire when poked with the fire arrow)
  • Lighting arrows now requires to hold the 'Lighter' button for half a second
  • It no longer possible to shoot arrows while lighting it on fire
  • Arrow fire now properly shuts down after a few seconds
  • Arrow fire now properly burns close by objects
  • Lowered big effigy burn duration to 20 minutes (was 40)
  • Worked around an issue with some keyboards shooting keydown message repeatedly when holding down a key, preventing from using held input actions
  • Player no longer gets cold immediately when entering water at night or in caves, instead there is a chance it happens over time when water level is above ankles
  • Player can look down more while climbing cliffs
  • Fixed player movement breaking when sitting on a bench and alt attacking with a spear
  • Fixed player crouching glitching out whilst holding lit arrows
  • Fixed raft row material glowing
  • Fixed grabbing rocks from sled while carrying a body bug
  • Improved look of dirty pot water and improved look of steam particle when boiled
  • Fixed issue causing water pot to have a wrong texture when boiling dirty water on fire
  • Increased player swim upwards speed
  • Balanced blood amount on screen when suffering damage
  • Food cooking on a fire gets destroyed when the fire does, except water pot which you can pick up empty afterwards
  • Fixed bug where camera could be sometimes slightly offset after plane crash
  • Removed pre-placed dead cannibals in world
  • Raft is slightly faster now
 

The Forest on Steam

Thanks to everyone, we are currently the number one game on Steam!

Public Alpha Release

The Forest public alpha releases tomorrow morning at 9AM PST on Steam!  

Gifs

Hey Everyone,

 

Here are some new gifs we've just made, showing off more of the world, wildlife and the plane crash.

 

Store Page

Hey everyone, Just a quick update. Our store page is finally up. Check it out at:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/242760

We'll do a bigger update next week along with some cool new media we have to show.

Trailer 3

Hey everyone,

Here's our third trailer, showing a more extended look at some of our survival systems and also what life is like in the forest a little further into the game.

Trailer 2

Hey everyone,

Here it is, the second trailer. Showing life in the forest a few weeks after the initial plane crash.

 

http://youtu.be/KwImGYR2rwg

Happy Halloween

We have a bunch of cool new stuff to show, check back next week for a  new trailer.