Hello Deadsiders!
Since the start of the new year, our developers here at Bad Pixel have been quietly working and preparing, with the hopes of making 2024 the best year for Deadside so far. In order to make this a reality, many of our developers are focused on very time consuming, large scale features. This means our post today might not have as much teaser content compared to previous WIP posts, however, we still have some very big news to talk about, so let's begin!
Sleeping Bags!
While we have already put some teasers out on sleeping bags already, we thought it would make sense to take the time and talk more in detail about how this feature might function. It's no secret now that this feature has the potential to radically change how respawns work in Deadside, so we have lots to talk about. Before we begin though, please remember that this is still a WIP feature, anything and everything about sleeping bags is subject to change. With that cleared up, let's talk about this feature;
The sleeping bags are actually quite simple on their own, they can be crafted with rags, and placed in most areas around the world. Once placed, these sleeping bags will allow you to respawn on them. Once you respawn on a sleeping bag, that specific bag, and any other sleeping bags within a certain radius, will have a cooldown timer.
The respawn marker inside of bases will be removed from the game with the introduction of sleeping bags, with the sleeping bags themselves essentially replacing the marker. While this might seem like just a visual change at first, the ability for both base defenders and raiders to have access to their own selection of sleeping bags, has the potential to completely change the way raids are done.
We have also re-balanced the respawn beacons to function better within this new sleeping bag system, now instead of just providing a single respawn point for yourself, a respawn beacon will now be a shared respawn that anyone in your squad can access and use.
While this might seem like a lot already, we have lots of other ideas regarding other aspects of the respawn system that we may change with the release of sleeping bags. Unlike what we have already written about though, these ideas are not nearly as finalized, so it wouldn’t be wise to write about them today. This means it's very possible that the final version may include more changes than what we have talked about here, so make sure to keep an eye out for future posts!
Overall, the sleeping bag mechanic should give our players a lot more control over their respawns, making it a more important part of the game that our players will need to actively participate in, ideally adding more depth to the game in total. They are being tested on the Closed Test Server currently, so you should be able to try out this mechanic for yourself very soon
Ground Vehicles!
As you may know, the Bad Pixel team has been working on ground transport intermittently for a very long time. It has always been our most requested feature, and one of our biggest development challenges. Today we are happy to report a bit of progress on these highly anticipated automobiles;
The biggest challenge when it comes to ground vehicles in Deadside, is netcode optimization. Compared to the boats which we already have in game, ground vehicles require more complex physics interactions. This means more processing power needs to be spent by the central game server, in order to correctly sync the vehicle on each player's client.
Essentially, our goals with ground vehicles are to have them functioning smoothly, and to have enough of them on the map so that they are accessible for most players. Both of these attributes require efficient netcode, which is why our vehicle team continues to spend most of their time focused on further optimizing the network architecture of the vehicles.
So far this year, we have already had some promising internal tests of ground vehicles running on test servers. That being said, the vehicles are still very much a work in progress and far from any sort of release, but if development continues to run smoothly, that might start to change
However, a system this complex could seem like it's functioning great in one moment, only to have a critical error hidden away that requires potentially months more development time to be spent. This is something we have experienced in the past when developing boats, it's just the nature of working on vehicles in a game like ours. With this in mind, it wouldn’t be responsible for us to give you a time-frame for the release of ground vehicles. In any case, we will keep you updated on progress.
Now, we understand you may have read “ground vehicles” in the title, and were hoping for maybe more exciting news than what we have presented so far. But don’t worry, we wouldn’t leave you completely empty handed.
Similar to the two different types of boats in game, we have decided to add two different types of ground vehicles;
The first type will be a car made for transporting people and cargo across a range of road types. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, especially if you have seen our old car teasers.The new second type of ground vehicle however, isn’t meant for squads at all. In fact, it might end up only using two wheels! This second type of vehicle will be much smaller, with less room for cargo and passengers. But, just like the inflatable boat, this second type of vehicle will likely have its own specialized advantages for its role.
So, that is all the news we have for today. We can’t wait to show you what else we have been working on in the background. In the meantime, if you have any feedback we would be happy to hear it. You can send your feedback to any of our socials, but the best places would be our Nolt, for suggested features, and our Discord, if you would like to have more in depth conversations with our community, or community managers.
Thanks for reading, stay tuned!
Bad Pixel
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