v3.3.4 Pre-alpha: Perks, vehicles and walkers

Summary

This update overhauls vehicles (handling, repairs, trunk loot), adds walkers and surprise hordes, brings perks every five levels, and fixes over 20 bugs

Features

Vehicles

Vehicles got a big pass this release: how they drive, what is inside them, and what happens when you hit something.

• Cars have real body dynamics now: every wheel has its own suspension, and the body rolls through corners, dives under braking and squats under power.
• Hold shift for a handbrake turn: the rear breaks loose so you can swing the car round, and grips again when you let go.
• Run a zombie down and it takes damage by speed, ragdolls away, and sprays blood across the hood and windscreen.
• Start the engine from an ignition prompt on the steering column.
• Trunks can be looted, or leave the loot and watch it roll around as you drive.
• Loot found in a car is appropriate for what you would find in an abandoned car: spares, road kit and cargo in the trunk, small everyday things in the glovebox.
• A car will not start at all when the engine, battery, fuel tank or radiator are missing, and it will not stop if the brakes are missing.
• The seat and ignition prompts tell you why a car will not go (no fuel, dead battery, no engine, an axle stripped of tires) before getting in.
• A missing or flat tire leans the car, slows it down and scrapes along the road. Lose both tires on an axle and it will not move at all.
• All seats in a car can be sat in (up to 4 seats).
• Open the hood to access the repair screen for each car. This is where you will fuel up, change the oil, and swap or repair parts.
• Getting out of a running car leaves the engine idling, and burning fuel, so you can hop out, do something and get back in.

Zombies and hordes

Zombies and hordes were reworked.

• Walkers have been added.
• Runners are a separate, rare threat.
• Horde zombies' eyes now glow so it is easier to tell where they came from.
• Zombies spawn mostly in and around POIs and roads. They are now rarely found out in the forest.
• Hordes are events rather than nights: one lands every 3 to 8 days at any hour, and a new world can switch them off entirely from the New Game screen.
• Every zombie in a horde is a runner, and horde size grows with party size, zone and skill, starting at ten for a lone new player in zone 1.
• A horde ends when the last remaining zombie is killed.
• Nothing warns you a horde is coming any more. It just arrives.
• Your first horde is a short, light introduction rather than a siege.

Everything else

• Survivors have an overall level and each level up grants a perk point. Perk points can be used to unlock perks for each of the 20 skill lines.
• Perks arrive every five levels on every skill line, starting at level 5 instead of level 20, with costs brought down to match and a Perk Ready alert when one unlocks.
• Electrical now has perks: four of them, and they all extend how far a wire run reaches, taking it from 20 m to 35 m across the ladder.
• All players are put in a squad by default now so they can easily find each other.
• Each player's survivor skill is now shown in the squad section of the HUD.
• Sticks, logs and stones (essential crafting resources) are now spawned through the world.
• Painkillers now cost you a fifth of your thirst bar.
• Your death sack shows on the HUD compass as a bearing and range mark, so you can walk straight back to your gear without opening the map.
• Healthy vitals now auto hide to reduce clutter on screen. They reappear when they require attention.
• Being over encumbered slows you down and shows an encumbered chip instead of stopping you carrying more, and the carry weight bar has left the HUD.
• Crouch moved to Left Ctrl and is hold to crouch by default, so you stand up when you let go. Settings > Controls switches it back to Toggle, and the key is rebindable like everything else.
• E is the inventory's action key: press it to eat, drink, equip or dismantle whatever is selected, and Enter is now the dedicated Equip key.
• Day and night lighting has been adjusted: daylight is more neutral instead of yellow, midday is no longer blown out, and the moonlight stays bright all night.
• Overcast weather dims the sun and casts cloud shadows across the ground, so a grey sky looks grey.
• The campfire panel was rebuilt: five ingredient slots to drag or shift-click food into and fuel tiles underneath.
• The old clothing cut for the previous character models is gone from loot, and gear your survivor can actually wear turns up in its place at the same rate.
• Bug reports include a screenshot: press F8 anywhere to take one or one will be included by default.
• More logs are now included with diagnostics to help identify and fix issues.
• The report form is shorter and harder to get wrong: name and email have been removed. The Area chips are no longer pre-selected and sit right above the diagnostics panel, and you are now returned to the game after submitting.
• The fisheye distortion and vignette on the camera has been removed, and the default field of view is 70 everywhere.
• The bow's aim helper now defaults off.
• New Game opens the last map you hosted.
• Quantity in the admin spawner can be held to tick up, faster the longer you hold, or clicked and typed in directly from 1 to 999.

Bug fixes

Vehicles

• Zombies walked straight through parked cars. A stopped car is solid to them now, and a moving one still is not, so you can run them down.
• Low-speed steering is more realistic.
• Driver and passenger positioning in vehicles has been improved.
• Lifting off the throttle lets the engine note fall away instead of cutting straight to idle.
• The SUV and wagon no longer flip over the moment they spawn.
• Door prompts sit on the handle and follow the door as it swings.
• Seat, glovebox and trunk prompts only appear once the door in front of them is open.
• Interacting from a car seat, starting the ignition or pulling a door shut, no longer throws you out of the vehicle.

Everything else

• The crosshair no longer disappears when you aim down sights.
• Walking backwards while firing flashed the screen white for a frame.
• Items in a loot container can be used right out of the container: eat, drink or heal yourself straight from the crate, and put on or store clothing without pulling it into your pack first.
• Escape cancels a build placement instead of leaving you holding a ghost with no way out.
• Grass and bushes bend and rustle again as you and your teammates walk through them, and the rustle only fires in genuinely thick cover instead of on every step.
• Fog of war is fully opaque on both the map and the minimap, so unexplored ground shows nothing at all instead of a faint outline.
• A freshly wired turret or light comes up with its breaker already on.
• Looking at an item you have no room for warns you with a "No room in pack" hint before you press anything.
• The respawn screen was rebuilt in the game's current style.
• The leftover reload prompt from the old UI is gone.
• Upscaling choice survives a change of quality tier instead of being silently cleared.
• The day counter starts at Day 1 rather than Day 0.
• Spawning items from the admin panel is more informative, telling you if it was successful or not.
• Leaning has been turned off for now as it was buggy. It may be re-introduced in the future.