### Alpha Version 0.2.15.0a - Now live
Two words. Patch 0.2.15.0 is here! Strictly, that’s more like three words and a number, but that’s a far less catchy way to get the ball rolling on this week's rad buffet of updates and fixes, available right now!
In other linguistic news, I don’t think I’ve ever put the words ‘rad’ and ‘buffet’ together before, although all buffets are rad.
Game Play
Admin Manager
- Added new Admin Manager. Show and hide the admin menu with [Shift + /] key. This allows players to use a variety of debugging tools, such as God mode, Ghost mode, Teleport, Spawn Items and Enable Free Camera Mode.
Ghost mode - Allows the player to move without collision. Teleport - Instantly move to required location (feature in development). Spawn Items - Add required items to inventory/world (feature in development). Free Camera Mode - Explore the map using a floating camera without the restrictions of the character.``` - Some of these features are still in development and may be adjusted over time.
- These tools are intended for single-player testing purposes and multiplayer admin users. We do not expect most players to use them unless desired.
Interactables & Placeables
- All types of tool boxes will now contain tools and crafting items. Tool boxes can sometimes contain hammers.
[h1]World/Environment[/h1
Hanouten
- Various parts of Hanouten’s landscape and layout have changed in conjunction with the optimisation pass of the area.
- Replaced tall fences around Hanouten with a wider variety of fences.
Improved optimised of fence shaders and textures.``` - Added new cliffs to Hanouten.
- Reduced overall density of foliage around Hanouten.
World Items
- Re-added missing birds nests from the world. They can be found in any woodlands area. Can be used to collect feathers and sticks.
- Added new double story garage to locations around Hanouten.
- Added new hedge rows added to gardens around Hanouten.
- Added new lootable dresser furniture to some houses.
- Added new Pumpkin Lanterns which can be picked up and placed. Toggle them on and off to create a source of light.
- Replaced static scene lights with usable kerosene lanterns.
Player
Swimming
- Adjusted character collision size when swimming, allow players to swim though tight areas.
Work in Progress
- Head stomping mechanic, down an infected then [left click] to perform the head stomp. This is very rough and a work in progress.
Camera
- Re-enabled player auto-focus to automatically focus where the player is looking. This slightly blurs items in the distance or close up depending on the focused object’s distance from the player.
- Adjusted camera settings to appear more cinematic with player focus and distance.
Visual Improvements
Foliage
- Swapped out pine trees with Alder trees to match the area better.
- New Alder trees are slightly more performant compared with their Pine counterparts.
Performance
- Level of Detail (LOD) and shadow property adjustmentments for improved optimisation.
Improved LODs on crane meshes at the Burchett Docks. Improved LODs and shadows on store buildings. Improved LODs and shadows on beach breakers. Improved LODs and shadows on old broken piers (increasing number of LODs and disabling shadows on low LODs). Improved LODs, shadows and textures on riverbanks to reduce GPU and memory consumption. Improved safe zone walls with LODs and reduced texture resolution.``` - Improved stone wall’s textures and materials for improved optimisation.
- Improved textures for pathways to reduce memory consumption.
- Improved distance field texture quality from 16-bit to 8-bit to reduce Video Memory (VRAM) consumption.
- Changed distance field compression to reduce hitches and lag spikes when loading in world tiles.
- Disabled Distance Field Data from assets which do not really require it. This should reduce VRAM consumption for improved optimisation.
- All damaged SUV vehicles have been instantiated to reduce the number of required Draw Calls.
- Reduced complexity of all road materials to improve GPU rendering time.
- Replaced sidewalk meshes with performance friendly versions to reduce GPU rendering time.
- Reduced texture resolution of non-enterable building interiors to reduce memory consumption.
- Reduced texture resolution of Roof Rack lootables to reduce memory consumption.
- Distance culling added to all props using "master props" shader. This reduces the amount of memory used on textures rendered at distance at the cost of a slightly more expensive shader.
- This technique may be replaced with Virtual Texture Streaming after engine version upgrade to UE 4.23 or higher.
- Optimised remaining houses in Hanouten. Some houses have been rebuilt while removing hidden plains and conducting general maintenance on the assets.
- Optimised textures for furniture in houses.
Post Processing
- Changed Anti-Aliasing type back to Temporal-AA to boost performance with a slight quality improvement.
- Removed distance blur to improve performance but consequently draw distance may need increasing.
- Changed "Gaussian Depth of Field" to "Circle Depth of Field" as a cheaper method of handling Depth of Field with little visual difference.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Amy continuing to have facial expressions and blinking when dead.
- Fixed camera unintentionally zooming in with [RMB] when using [RMB] to melee attack.
- Fixed camera not zooming in with [RMB] after holstering a melee weapon.
- Fixed bug caused by closing the inventory with [Tab] while simultaneously interacting with the campfire resulting in Amy getting stuck in a sitting animation.
- Fixed situation causing melee weapons not to register hits after the first impact.
- Tentative fix for issues regarding containers showing the wrong items or no items at all.
- Fixed collision issues on some varieties of fern plant colliding with the player.
- Fixed collisions for Mortar & Pestle trucks to fix prevent player from climbing through the roof.
- Fixed gaps between paths and landscape around the abandoned building near Hanouten.
- Fixed being able to loot through walls without preventing items being picked up if dropped among foliage or in water.
- Fixed issues engaging character’s jog/sprint if [Left Shift] was pressed down before the movement key. This would result in not being able to run until [Left Shift] was released and engaged again.
- Fixed bug causing character to move at normal speed in shallow water when overburdened.
- Fixed issue with foliage blurring the players vision due to the updated auto focus system
- Fixed issue not being able to ADS in first person in buildings
### THINGS TO REMEMBER BEFORE PURCHASING JOE
We are aware that the game is currently very demanding on performance and bugs can cause problems during gameplay. JoE is in constant development by two developers and a single 3D artists. We are keen to resolve issues as promptly as possible, although please understand that they are to be expected as the game continues into development.Please make sure to read the following statement from our Steam store page before considering your purchase, as always your support is appreciated.
BEFORE YOU PURCHASE: AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE DEV TEAM
In the spirit of our ethos of transparency and integrity we want you to know that our game is at ALPHA stage in EARLY ACCESS and will therefore contain many bugs and have performance issues on low to mid-end machines. We’re really proud of how it plays so far (it’s a lot of fun!) but if your rig DOES NOT meet the RECOMMENDED spec then the game may not perform well and as much as we appreciate your support we would suggest that you wait until later in development before you invest your money. We don’t want you buying something that’s going to disappoint you.
Please also be aware that multiplayer is not yet implemented. This is under development and planned for Q4 2019. ### COMMUNITY LINKS
Steam Community Forums
Official JoE Discord Server
Twitter
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