Hey everyone ! Today is the big day !

Alpha 1.0.0 is finally available and with it a ton of content is added in the game !

There is a brand new gamemode, map changes, new weapons as well as the first Special Weapons, ground loot, many UI changes and optimizations, a saving system and much more !

If you missed it, you can take a look at the Alpha Launch Trailer:

I hope you will enjoy this update, there will be a new blog post in a few days/weeks talking about what’s next after this first Alpha version !

Now if you feel brave, you can take a look at the following patch notes to get all the details of this update !

Content:

• The first main part of this update is obviously the reworked horde gamemode, let’s talk a bit about it. With this gamemode, the map is divided into 3 sectors, each with 3 or 4 areas to control. To control these area you will have to defeat multiple waves of zombies which, as you can imagine, will become more and more difficult as you progress in the game. Control an area will earn you Area Points (which will allow to unlock next sectors) and Gear Points which can be spent in the end of round shop. This shop will be accessible when an area is completely controlled and offer, at each round, an unique Weapon, two Rarity Upgrades, the ability to refill Heal items, Ammos and Projectiles as well as some Crafting Resources bundles. The Weapon and the Upgrades will have a randomized rarity and more you progress into the game, more you will have chances to get better-tiered stuff. Once you controlled each area and sector, the game is not finished, you will enter in the endless mode and have to defeat as much waves of zombies as possible. Here again you will have access to the shop at the end of each wave but this time you won’t have the ability to buy a Weapon. This make sense because, as you will read a bit later in this post, weapons and a lot of other items will be available to loot directly on the ground !

• Regarding the map, I first added a new zone to the very west of the map. This new area hide a bunker containing a good amount of nice loot and the brand new Special Weapon - which I will talk about later in this patch notes. To access this very singular place you will have to find 3 valves hidden on the map, one on each sector, allowing you to drain the toxic water and open the bunker’s door. In adition to this new area, I made some various changes across the map like this small new place on the seafront with some global rework around this area.

• In relation with the bunker, i’m introducing a new type of weapons: Special Weapons. Special Weapons are the rarest weapons you can get and they have 5 special abilities each. They also are by default a lot more powerful than classic weapons - even Gold weapons - but obviously you can’t upgrade special weapons. The first Special Weapon I’m introducing with this update is the Elite Sniper, it can be found into the bunker and have the following abilities: Quick reload, Piercing shot, Adaptative Optic, Quick Scoper and Efficient Storage This is only the first Special Weapon as there are other weapons of this tier planned such as a Flamethrower or a Crossbow. But this update don’t only bring one new Special Weapon, there are also 5 new normal weapons, one for each ‘class’ of weapons ! With these new guns, you can now play up to 21 different weapons !

• As said earlier, with this update i am also introducing randomly generated ground loot. You will be able to find this loot pretty much everywhere. There are ammos, upgrades, crafting resources, projectiles, heal items and weapons - all with different rarities tier and variable amounts for collectibles. Based on this, crafting resources are not unlimited anymore and the player will only have a starter of 3 weapons at the begining.

• In relation with this new ground loot system, there is also a small rework of the pickup system: The outline now reflect the rarity of the outlined item and there is as well a new UI that show over the item with the name an rarity of it Regarding weapons, you can also now equip a weapon without going into the Workbench by simply pressing onto the alternative interaction button instead of the default interaction button when you picking it up. You will be presented with the same menu as in the Workbench to choose a slot. This new alternative interaction button is by default set on Q.

• In this update I finally added a fully functionnal Saving System. It is pretty straightforward: You can save as much of your parties as you want and load them up at any time ! The saves game are by default located here: C:\Users[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\DeadAlonePackage\Saved\SaveGames However you need to note that there is currently some restrictions: there is no auto saving and I can’t ensure that the saves will work across future updates.

• This update also bring some global improvements and changes to UIs. Firstly with the addition of animations to multiple UIs improving the overall flow of the game. There is also a lot of UIs changes especially to better reflect the Rarity of weapons or equipements and some Quality of Life changes to several UIs.

  • As the game changed name, menus needed also an overall rework. The Main Menu and Pause Menu as well as the ‘First Play’ Message and the small Tutorial at the begining of a party have all been updated for this version.
  • A last small adition is an FPS Counter on the top left of the screen that you can toggle with F3 by default.

• Finally, this update bring a small rework to the projectiles: The zombies will now be stun after being hit by a grenade: 5 seconds for the Smoke Grenade, 1.5s for the Molotov and Frag Grenades. The smoke grenade will now also explode immediately when hiting something - unlike before where it needed 1 second before exploding. I also made several improvements the projectiles physic when colliding with the environment and the zombies. All this changes should, I hope, give a more important and interesting role to the projectiles in the game !

Changes:

• First of all, there are been new sounds implemented like breath sounds, jump sounds, ambiant sounds and more !

• Global optimisations have been made to the game. This may accentuate some objects popping but I tried to always get the best compromises to minimize the visual impact of these changes. I also made several UI-related optimisations

• Rework of the way reloading is handled to allow for more interesting upgrades regarding the reloading time - accordingly I changed all the reload time upgrades

• Some changes have been made to the sniper scope: the main HUD will now still be visible while aiming to allow the player to always have a look at the crucial informations displayed onto the HUD. I also done some rebalancing on the snipers to make them a bit more powerful and more stable while aiming

• There are been changes to the remaping settings with multiple new inputs that can be remapped into the: Open Shop (default to B), Alternative Interaction (default to Q), Toggle FPS Counter (default to F3)

• Slight updates to the flashlight, it has now a smaller radius but is brighter and can enlight at a longer distance

• Changes on the way zombies can slow down the player and changes on how the slow down is handled to be less frustrating but still penalizing. The slow down will now vary based on the Zombie Type, smaller zombies will have a less strong slow down effect than bigger ones. I also done some balancing to zombies, they now all deal 1 damage point less and some have less hps. I also made multiple AI improvements and improved the zombies jumping behavior

• Changes to the dispersion of weapons, they now are a lot more pronounced when sprinting or jumping

• The amount of damages required to explode an Explosive Barrel is reduced

Fixes:

In this update I fixed a ton of bugs and for obvious reasons I won’t list them all. Here are some of the most importants though:

• Fixed an issue that could cause the game to crash when spawning zombies in certain conditions

• Fixed multiple issues with Armors

• The tutorial will now show the correct inputs if you changed them before starting your new game

• All the sub-menus of the Workbench can now be closed by pressing Escape

• Volume settings are now properly saved and applied at the startup of the game

• Fixed an issue that caused zombies to disapear when aiming at them

• Fixed an issue that caused the weapons to shoot uselessly when opening the heal or projectile menu - also fixed a related bug that could cause the weapons to be able to shoot while reloading

• Fixed multiple other issues with the Weapon System including several issues with reloading and equiping weapons

• Fixed an issue that could cause the player to be unable to pickup items while standing in a smoke grenade

• Fixed an issue that allowed the player to craft even if he didn’t had the required resources

• Fixed an issue that caused the Frag Grenade to glitch trough zombies

• Fixed several UI-related issues

• Fixed a bug that cause the healing effect to continue after player death

• Fixed multiple sound issues

• Fixed an issue causing some buildings to change color for no reasons