Update 3 (version 1.08) Headshots & Big Fixes

What a week it's been!

It was a flurry of activity having caught the attention of several YouTubers and the pressure on the servers did reveal some issues. I think I was like 1AM Saturday when half of the world decided to try and play Zombie Barricades and we were watching the graphs and charts with great interest.

It seems the games servers had a memory leak which meant after about an hour things would start to grind. 

In itself this wasn't a massive problem because the servers shut themselves down when no-one is playing on them but what was more disturbing was how the networking side of things coped with the additional traffic. 

I logged onto one of the servers to test and was mortified to find Players running around in circles shooting at trees and Zombies moonwalking backwards down the road to Fort Hope.

Disaster.

Well no actually it wasn't that bad hehe, but we had a fair few sleepless nights working it all out and had quite the laugh about it on Discord!

Possibly the biggest accomplishment of the last week was writing our own lightweight custom networking solution which is as smooth as silk, the memory issues have almost been patched away too. 

We're quite excited to see how many Players will fit on a server once a few more fixes are in place!

The game gets a couple of optimizations for older hardware with some more quality settings in Options, we have a chance to now headshot Zombies/Characters and cause automatic knockdown and double damage, and we've started collecting stats for the leader-boards!

Some great feedback and by just watching you guys play is evolving things leaps and bounds -we are  miles ahead technically of where we were last week. 

It's exciting stuff!

Here's a list of the major changes in versions 1.06, 1.07 & 1.08

• Added [1.06]: Player character's head looks in direction of mouse
• Added [1.06]: The more players on a server, the more Zombies!!
• Added [1.08]: Headshot! Does double damage
• Added [1.08]: Queued headtexts (more readable)
• Added [1.08]: Backend management tools
• Added [1.08]: Started collecting stats in preperation for leaderboards 
• Added [1.08]: Shadow settings to Display (Off, Low, High)
• Added [1.08]: Vsync settings to Display (On, Off)
• Update [1.06]: Scrapped uNet and wrote custom game-network layer
• Update [1.06]: Localized Player animations (smoother animations)
• Update [1.06]: Increased client/server transmission rates
• Update [1.07]: Relaxed e-mail sign-up rules
• Update [1.08]: Tweaks to shadow performance
• Update [1.08]: General performance tweaks
• Update [1.08]: Increased network sync stream efficiency by further 20%
• Fixed [1.06]: Corpse's become bullet magnet if 'in the way' of shot
• Fixed [1.06]: Server memory leak patches
• Fixed [1.06]: Server connection issues
• Fixed [1.07]: Fix reloading animations
• Fixed [1.07]: Fix client crash playing second game (no weapons/inventory)
• Fixed [1.07]: Item not disappearing when picked up by other Players
• Fixed [1.07]: Player character left running on spot when disconnecting
• Fixed [1.07]: Magazine ammo display not updating
• Fixed [1.07]: Zombie recycling on server
• Fixed [1.08]: Projectiles fired at point blank range
• Fixed [1.08]: Fixes applied to players running on the spot
• Fixed [1.08]: Fixes applied to player/npc melee
• Fixed [1.08]: Patched issue with unit outliner sometimes obscuring units
• Fixed [1.08]: Session disconnected message when Player disconnects