SUBLEVEL - Alpha 0.7.2 "Talk to Them"

Thanks to everyone who played 0.6 and sent notes. This update covers almost every one of them: about 55 fixes and changes.

New

• Wiring the bikes. The electrical panel is now a small puzzle: four coloured leads, five terminals, and one of them is the lights. Ask Márta for the scheme, or learn it the hard way (sparks, no game over).
• Running a cable. Take a cable from the panel and drag it to a spin bike or the treadmill, up to 75 m. A machine only makes power once it is plugged in. Shut a door on the cable and it's cut.
• Tie them up. Zip ties, duct tape, a band or rope: knock one down, shove it, or catch a calm one, and tie it. Lead it on a band, strap it to the treadmill, or lock it in a sauna. The ties wear out.
• Arm your people. Hold E on someone with a weapon in hand to give it to them. Guards fight with what you gave them. The roster shows who holds what. Dani is eleven and says no.
• Weapon on your back (H). Eat, drink or climb into the vent without dropping your spear.
• Wait (Z). Early for something? Wait at a bench, a lounger or the desk until it happens.
• Call for help. Hold E at a barricade to call the nearest free person to stack it with you.
• Prologue. A short opening before the first evening. Press E to skip it.
• 10 new events on days 3–7:
  • Attila's heart pills
  • Dani's name on the glass
  • Zsolt needs a spotter
  • the pool is leaking
  • a fight over rations
  • something scratching behind the pool at night
  • Kata's son
  • Nóra's sleep plan
  • Bence asks to guard the stair
  • Réka's secret stash
• The street is alive (and then it isn't). Homeless people sleep in the doorways and on the benches. After the outbreak they get up, a few each day. The man at the corner shop till has red eyes. The infected now come from the side streets and gates, not out of thin air.

Story and dialogue

• Talk that follows what happens. People react to the day, the dead, the blackout, the vote, their job, their hunger, and who is on the treadmill. No more random lines.
• People talk to each other when they're near you.
• Bence is introduced properly, and the man on the treadmill has a name: Feri. Why Bence wants out now makes sense.
• Not everyone panics. Attila has seen worse. Only the ones who actually panic need calming.
• Petra has a backstory and a voice.
• Márta now hands you her keys. They open the service rooms only; Kata's master card opens everything.

World and art

• A rebuilt Pest street around the club: tenements, shopfronts, lamps, trees, parked cars, a stuck bus, and junctions instead of a void.
• A Gozsdu-style inner court behind the building.
• Every gym machine rebuilt: weight stacks, cables, consoles, pedals. The gym also got mats, racks, rollers and all the rest of the clutter.
• People now have faces, hands and hair. The infected have sunken eyes and open jaws.
• The vent shaft finally looks like a vent shaft. The pool has a proper glass roof, and you can walk up to it.
• Better item models: the empty bottle, protein bar, bread, keys, tins and more.
• Your people sleep on mats in the gym hall, and keep their distance from the thing on the treadmill.
• Quarantine can be downstairs (sauna or steam room). Opening the door with the card lets the person out.

Combat

• Each weapon class has its own attack: spears thrust, sledges slam overhead, flails swing wide, knives chop.
• Damage, stamina, reach and noise come from what the weapon is made of. A sledge and a knife really feel different now.

Fixes

• Zombies no longer appear inside without a way in. When the glass breaks, the journal says so.
• Zombies can't slip through the grille the moment you open it. They pass one at a time.
• The glass no longer cracks on its own when nobody is outside.
• People no longer walk into rooms full of the infected (sorry, Attila).
• Zombies now attack your people too, not only you.
• Deaths are announced: who, where and why.
• "You woke abruptly" now shows when you actually wake.
• Turning the lamp off now makes them lose interest.
• Food and water add up. The reception fridge is a real shelf you can eat from; the pantry is downstairs. Protein bars count. A filled bottle counts.
• Distilling now tells you when it has no power.
• The day-0 "go to sleep" task no longer shows up at 11 am.
• Items no longer jump to another pocket or vanish from the hotbar.
• The backpack can be taken off from the inventory.
• Prompts fade after a second instead of sitting in your face.
• The generator tells you when it starts or stops, and the person pedalling actually pedals.
• Braces on the vent hatch are now on your side, where you can see them.
• The pool lounger is a save spot too.
• Flickering textures (z-fighting) on the street, shopfronts and props are fixed.
• Floating names no longer overlap.
• Performance: big gains at night and in the basement (nothing is drawn behind walls or shadowed with no sun).
• Russian texts now use the correct gender endings.

Known issues

• Hungarian and Russian translations of the new lines are not proofread yet.
• People can still take odd routes or bunch up in doorways.
• Mirror reflections sometimes look wrong.

Tell us what happened to your group in the comments.