Happy new year! + Q1 Plans

Hi!

New year is coming and new development plans with it.

I already mentioned about the upcoming Public Demo 2 (Q1) in this latest demo video but here's also few other details that are coming early next year.

Complete website overhaul

Even though I do have web development background, I'm fully focused on that Public Demo 2 currently and I don't have time for personally redesigning the website.

I will be outsourcing this task starting Jan 8th. and the goal is to have professional website with:
- Dedicated patch notes + easy to access changelogs
- Interactive world map or some kind of map preview
- Automatic Youtube / social media integration
- Much better media / content section
- Feedback forms and bug reports
- More information about the game
- Jobs / contractors needed page
- Expanded FAQ page

I know that websites are a bit "boring" topics nowadays but I really want a modern and visually compelling info "hub" that is easy to access way to get into the project without having to watch all the previous devlogs etc.

More contractors / outsourced tasks

On top of the current contractors and task areas, I will be outsourcing the following elements early next year:

- AI / Trader voice actor (First in-game trader coming Q1)
- Environment artist for redoing all the nature elements and trees (Finnish nature)
- 3D / Vehicle artist (Nordic / Skandinavian destroyed vehicles)

Public Demo 2 Map Milestones

The upcoming Public Demo 2 is 95% about rebuilding / modifying the maps and 5% is required for redesigning the overall shelter save system since that could not been ported from Unity (it used certain engine plugin).

In order to make sure that I will stay on this Q1 schedule I will be making some kind of weekly milestones for this map rebuilding process (probably one map per week).

I will be sharing these map milestones next week when I start this rebuilding process.

Loot challenge Part 2.

I really liked the "positive pressure" from last loot challenge to make new items to the game and for phases after Public Demo 2, I think there's now a good opportunity to start making even more items / loot early on.

I think the current 100 items is a good start but based on my initial loot spawning tests it will become pretty repetitive soon after it's divided to different loot tables and item rarity levels.

I think I will be starting this loot challenge part 2 next week also and maybe 1-2 new items per week is a good start, since it requires fairly little time and it's mostly a fun little side task each week.

Happy new year!

- Antti (Developer)