Not Quite Dead: Open World Survival · published
Hey everyone!
The last week has been absolutely massive for Not Quite Dead.
Since August 18, I’ve been working almost nonstop on multiplayer stability, zombie behavior, quests, progression, localization, UI improvements, save compatibility, balancing, and final release polish.
A lot of these changes are not just small fixes several important systems have been reworked or heavily improved in preparation for release.
So here is the big recap of everything that changed!
Zombie behavior received a major balancing and multiplayer pass.
Changes include:
Fixed zombie damage values.
Fixed zombie HP.
Adjusted zombie running speed.
Improved zombie aggro range.
Improved the distance at which zombies lose aggro.
Fixed zombie aggro/detection sounds being incorrectly replicated to every player.
Reduced zombie vision angle from 90° to 65°.
The reduced vision cone makes stealth much more useful.
You now have a better chance to sneak behind zombies, avoid detection, or attack them from behind instead of being instantly spotted from extremely wide angles.
A completely new Zombie Kill progression system has been added.
Zombie kills are now shared across the hosted world.
That means:
Host kills a zombie → everyone gets +1
Client kills a zombie → everyone gets +1
The system does not care which player lands the final hit.
It has now been tested with:
Host firearm kills
Client firearm kills
Client melee kills
Alternating Host/Client kills
Reconnecting Clients
Dead zombie/corpse damage
A zombie can only increase the counter once, so shooting a corpse cannot produce additional progress.
The Event interface now includes Zombie Kill milestone rewards.
As the shared zombie counter increases, rewards can transition through:
LOCKED → CLAIM → CLAIMED
The kill total is shared between players, but reward claims are personal.
For example:
If the Host claims the 500-kill reward, the Client can still independently claim their own 500-kill reward.
One player cannot take another player's reward.
The reward system is DataTable-driven, so milestones and rewards can also be adjusted in the future without rebuilding the progression system.
The previous Trader interface has been removed and replaced with a new one.
The old system had several problems, especially when a Client rather than the Host attempted to trade.
It also wasn’t as user-friendly as I wanted it to be.
The new Trader includes:
Completely redesigned interface
Improved Buy/Sell workflow
Better item presentation
Better quantity management
Improved multiplayer support
Server-authoritative transactions
Better validation of Cash and inventory
Fixed Client selling problems
Fixed edge cases when purchasing with exactly the required amount of Cash
The Trader should now be much easier and more reliable to use in multiplayer.
Multiplayer quests received several important fixes during this period.
The final system now gives every player their own personal quest progression.
The Host and Client do not have to be on the same mission.
For example:
Host: Mission 5 — 4/5
Client: Mission 1 — 1/5
Both states can exist independently.
When a new player joins:
They receive their own starting mission.
Their actions progress their own quest.
Host progress remains untouched.
When that player reconnects:
Their current mission is restored.
Objective progress is restored.
Completed quests are restored.
Several additional Client/Host quest issues discovered during testing were also corrected.
You can now change your third-person camera distance using the mouse wheel.
The camera can move approximately between:
150 → 450
This is particularly useful inside:
Houses
Small rooms
Corridors
Tight interiors
Building areas
The transition is smooth rather than instantly snapping between distances.
Existing controls are preserved:
Map zoom still works.
Building controls still have priority.
Scrolling UI does not move the gameplay camera.
ADS still works normally.
Sniper aiming remains intact.
Vehicles retain their own camera behavior.
Wall collision still automatically pushes the camera closer.
A new Wooden Plank has been added to the Building section.
It requires Nails and gives players another option for constructing and reinforcing their bases.
Several smaller weapon and item changes were completed.
Fixed the Baseball Bat name.
Increased Baseball Bat damage.
Damage was reduced to:
65 Damage
Sorry, Gabriel. ❤️ 😂
Fixed collision when dropping the P90 on the ground.
The Red Shirt description now correctly explains that it adds:
+10 Inventory Slots
Night Vision received an equipment-state fix.
Previously, if Night Vision was active and the goggles were removed from the equipment slot, the Night Vision effect could remain active.
Now:
Remove Night Vision goggles → Night Vision automatically turns off.
Re-equipping the goggles does not incorrectly reactivate the effect automatically.
Several collision problems around the Prison area have been corrected.
Players should have fewer issues with incorrect blocking or collision in that location.
Faction Safe Zones now have additional markers to make them easier to identify and understand.
Localization received one of its largest passes yet.
Not Quite Dead currently supports:
English
French
German
Spanish — Mexico
Brazilian Portuguese
Polish
Russian
Turkish
Danish
Simplified Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Thousands of player-facing localization entries have now been reviewed and validated.
Several Crafting interface elements previously used internal English item names instead of their localized player-facing names.
This has been corrected.
Crafting now properly displays localized names for:
Ingredients
Required items
Selected recipes
Crafting results
Internal gameplay Item IDs remain unchanged.
The Repair interface contained similar cases where internal item names could appear instead of their translated names.
Those displays now correctly use localized item names as well.
Japanese received a particularly large amount of work.
Several UI fonts originally only supported Latin/Cyrillic characters.
Proper Japanese font fallback support was added throughout the standard UI using existing Noto Sans JP fonts.
But one final problem remained:
The Tutorial uses 37 world-space TextRenderActor instructions.
These were using an old Offline Oswald font that could not contain Japanese, Chinese, or Korean characters.
The translations existed correctly — the font simply could not render them.
This was a surprisingly tricky Unreal Engine issue because the normal Runtime Composite fonts used by the UI are not compatible with the Tutorial's TextRender rendering path.
A new solution was created using dedicated Offline fonts for different writing systems and one centralized Tutorial font manager.
The Tutorial now automatically selects the correct font depending on the active language.
The system was validated with:
English
French
German
Spanish
Portuguese
Polish
Russian
Turkish
Danish
Simplified Chinese
Japanese
Korean
37/37 Tutorial TextRender instructions now render correctly across all 12 supported cultures.
Japanese, Chinese and Korean characters are no longer invisible.
This was one of the final release-blocking localization issues.
Simplified Chinese and Korean received the same world-text treatment.
Dedicated compatible Offline font assets are now used inside the Tutorial instead of attempting to force the normal UI fonts through Unreal's older TextRender system.
This keeps the existing world-space Tutorial presentation while adding proper CJK support.
There is one technical limitation worth mentioning.
If you change the game's language while the Tutorial level is already loaded, the Tutorial needs to be reloaded before all world-space instructions rebuild in the new language.
Starting/loading the Tutorial with your selected language works correctly.
This is one of the most important release-safety changes.
Older Playtest saves can contain data that is no longer compatible with the current game.
Instead of allowing corrupted or incompatible old data to create black screens or strange gameplay problems, a new migration system now runs before normal player data is loaded.
Players may be asked whether they played an older version of Not Quite Dead.
Your existing data is left untouched and the game continues normally.
You receive another confirmation warning.
After confirmation:
Not Quite Dead closes safely.
The old local game data is removed after the game process has completely exited.
The next launch confirms that the old save data was removed.
The game then starts with fresh data.
This system has been tested in packaged Development and Shipping builds.
It is completely separate from the normal Delete Save Data option available in Settings.
A strange issue was investigated where melee attacks appeared to stop working after switching from certain firearms such as the P90.
After extensive testing, weapon switching itself was working correctly.
The real cause was stamina.
Melee attacks require enough stamina to execute.
When stamina was too low:
Left Click was still being received.
The weapon was not stuck.
The attack was simply rejected because the player did not have enough stamina.
Several combinations were tested:
P90 → melee
M4 → melee
Full-auto → melee
ADS → melee
Axe
Blocking
Rapid hotbar switching
Host
Remote Client
The underlying weapon system was confirmed to be working correctly.
A huge amount of the work during this period has been behind-the-scenes multiplayer and release QA.
This includes continued testing of:
Host/Client progression
Quest ownership
Zombie kills
UI replication
Reconnect behavior
Saving/loading
Trader transactions
Inventory
Rewards
Tutorial
Localization
Packaged builds
Shipping builds
The goal has been to catch issues that might only happen to Clients, reconnecting players, or packaged builds instead of only testing everything as the Host inside the editor.
At this point, Not Quite Dead has entered the Release Candidate phase.
That means I am essentially done adding major systems before release.
The priority now is:
Critical bugs
Crashes
Multiplayer stability
Save/load reliability
Packaging
Performance
Localization
Small visual polish
No unnecessary last-minute feature creep.
The goal now is simply to protect the build and make launch as stable as possible.
The support surrounding Not Quite Dead during these final days has been incredible.
Every wishlist, video, comment, Discord message, bug report, stream and piece of feedback genuinely helps me.
As a solo developer, the final stretch before releasing a game is both exciting and completely exhausting. 😂
But seeing so many people discovering the game and waiting to play it makes all of those late nights worth it.
We’re almost there.
Not Quite Dead releases September 1st.
Thank you for being part of this journey. ❤️
VOID Studio