Hello Deadsiders!

We are happy to present our 2023 roadmap!

We have a lot to talk about here, so let's break this roadmap down into a few different sections. These sections are not ordered by their appearance in game, instead they are organized to make everything easier to understand. We tried to take into account all of your wishes - we collected the most important of them, as well as those that coincide with our vision for the game’s development. With all that in mind, let's talk about these features:

A World of Animals:

First up, we have new animals! This is a highly requested feature on all of our social media platforms, especially over on our Nolt. We are thinking of adding not only animals to hunt for food, but hostile creatures as well. We feel that this addition will do a lot for the immersiveness of Deadside, while also creating interesting situations in more remote natural areas that were previously empty. We have been talking about expanding our food and water mechanics for a long time now, and this is another step in that direction. This process also includes Fishing, which will be a very useful mechanic for players who live in areas far away from any duck habitat, or canned food spawns. For them, this will be a very important source of nutrition. But, fishing will not be an inexhaustible resource, it is possible to overfish an area, in which case you will need to wait until more fish return to the location.

Expanding Your Tactical Capabilities:

Prone Position is another highly requested feature, and we are happy to finally confirm it for you all. The purpose of this feature is not to increase the number of campers or snipers, but actually to create more counter-play against them. The prone position allows you to hide behind small objects you previously couldn’t, or to hide in tall grass in a tough situation. With this feature, it will create more diverse tactical situations, and generally make the game more realistic. We have actually been experimenting with the prone position for a while, as there are a lot of technical challenges, mainly player collision. This can cause issues with odd animations, or player models poking through solid objects. Not only that, but there are many game balance aspects to consider as well. But, with our preliminary testing complete, we are confident enough to say that we plan to release it this year, if all goes well.

Prone will not be your only counterplay against snipers though, in update 0.6.0, you will see the addition of smoke grenades, which will be another useful tactical tool. Version 0.6.0 will also contain two new weapons, the NK417, and PP-3000. Both weapons are currently being tested on the Closed Test Server, along with the smoke grenades. For those who have been following development for a while, you know that this means update 0.6.0 will be on the Public Test Server very soon, with a full release following after.

Speaking of weapons, we plan to redesign some old weapon models going forward, as some of the older weapon models that were added early in Deadside’s development are quite simple, and don’t hold up to the same quality we are able to produce now. This will also lay the framework for improvements to the weapon system in the future, that we were unable to do in the past due to some technical nuances. Over the past year our team has expanded a lot, and this includes new weapon artists who are able to make these redesigns, you have already seen their work on the PP-3000 and NK417 models.

We are also working on a tutorial system. This should help players who are new to the game or genre get their bearings quickly, without requiring them to find a guide elsewhere. This will also help explain things that may not be clear to brand new players - like the difficulty of some events, and explain some more complicated features, like our raid system for example. This feature should hopefully alleviate some of the headaches new players may experience, while also making the game more approachable overall.

Improvements to Bases:

Expanding the functionality of bases is one of the most important features in this list. Many gameplay features of Deadside depend on player made bases, Raiding for example. But, in order for these features to function correctly, we need to make it worthwhile for players to invest in their base. Currently, bases only provide a handful of features. The main use being storage, we also have the water collector, respawn markers, and the workbench to apply skins to items. Most of these features you can already have without making a base at all, you get free storage in the safezone, you can collect water at wells, and craft a respawn beacon for dynamic respawns. So, we plan to add features that are unique to the base itself, making them more valuable, and more detailed than before.

We also plan to fix some problems and exploits affecting our current base building system. You will begin to see some of these fixes in update 0.6.0, where we have prevented the creation of floating bases. There are other fixes that are right around the corner as well, fixing other bugs and exploits, but they require more testing. In any case, we are aware of the problems with base building, and it is a priority for us to fix them as soon as we are able.

Land and Sea Vehicles:

Vehicles are a very important part of Deadside, its an area we will continue to focus on and improve, which you will be seeing immediately in version 0.6.0, with the addition of the new Inflatable Boat type. This new boat is much quieter, smaller, and quicker than our Swamp Boats, however, they are much weaker, contain less storage space, and only seat up to 2 players. With the addition of this boat, it will create more diverse playstyles and gameplay opportunities that were previously not possible, due to how loud and bulky the Swamp Boats are.

Expanding boat functionality is an important part of our roadmap, that will create systems used in both the boats, and wheeled vehicles in the future. We have already created a vehicle lock, and an inventory system for the boats in update 0.6.0, and we plan to continue improving the boats in the future. This includes everything from general optimization, and improvements to functionality in other areas.

We have already begun full development of wheeled vehicles, but we aren’t exactly sure when this feature will be finished, so we didn’t want to include it in the final roadmap. Even still, we hear how badly you all want cars, and your comments don’t go unnoticed. There is still lots of work to be done, and many technical challenges to overcome, but it's something we are prepared to take on this year.

New Locations & Gameplay

You all asked for a new big city, and so we will give it to you! Located in the south west of the map, this will be the largest city added into the game yet, putting our humble Beregovoy to shame. It will have many unique locations, with long building lined streets, all along a big river. This city isn’t just another new location, or pretty visual, it will create a different type of gameplay - the location will have many enclosed spaces, right next to places for sniper duels. The city will be part of a larger map expansion in the south west, which will include a few towns, and other unique points of interest. We plan to continue working on this map expansion over multiple updates, expanding the area, improving the suburbs, and the city itself.

And finally, our last feature for today, new missions. PvE events are a big part of Deadside, and expanding the variety of events for players to complete will add more depth to the gameplay, and provide more challenges for players to overcome. We also plan to continue improving already existing PvE events this year, as well as the AI themselves. PvE and AI improvements are a constant and complex process, as they are very server resource intensive. So it is something we will continue working on this year, and into 2024.


That's our roadmap! It took a while for us to get to this point, a lot of our time this year was spent on the Swamp Boat implementation, and until that was completed, it wasn’t possible for us to put out a roadmap that we could be confident in. We believe this roadmap is a realistic list of goals for the rest of 2023, but when it comes to game development, plans sometimes need to change, and that includes the planning in this roadmap. Even though plans may change, we still have a bit more in store for you. We have more plans for 2023 that weren't listed in this roadmap, as we really just wanted to cover the main points today, so, be sure to stay tuned for more news in the future :)

Thank you for reading, good luck out there!

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