Undead Blackout lives on! I think I left the last patch notes with a comment along the lines of ‘maybe the last patch ever?’. Ha yeah no. That was clearly never gonna be the case, I will be updating this game until the day I die.
Update 3.1.0 is a relatively small one to be fair but it is going to be followed by 3.2 (shocker there) which should update the game to Unreal Engine 5 and add in a whole host of fixes and things. Not sure when that one will drop but stay tuned.
The long-gestating Xbox One version may finally see the light of day after some technical challenges. Still a fair way to go but hoping that will finally emerge later this year. Oh, and I have also got the game running really nicely on Nintendo Switch so that seems like a pretty obvious move as well.
PATCH NOTES
Time playing the game seemed broken in the STATS screen. Not quite sure when that happened but the Time Played number got stuck at “0 HOURS 0 MINUTES” which is not ideal I guess
Increased rotation speed while the player is aiming from 50 to 100
Increased playerwalk speed from 100 to 200
Zombies have gotten faster! Their minimum move speed has gone up to 300 from 275
Removed references to keyboard controls but only temporarily. At the moment the game is primarily set up to be played with a control pad, as part of the next update I will be bringing back proper PC controls with mouse-based aiming etc.
New 4MB Logo is now added to the game! Have realised some of the splash images still have the old one on but that will have to wait for the next update
Shrunk the package size by over 1GB! Was previously 3.6GB on Steam, the game is now 2.5GB. Hopefully, this is just down to me removing a bunch of stuff rather than accidentally deleting four levels.
Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.27.2 which is the last major engine release before we hit 5.0.0
Undead Blackout’s last major update is here! Probably the last major one. I think. Will discuss that in more detail with a separate blog post. Anyway, there are a whole bunch of quality of life improvements to the game as well as a new playstyle, Survival Mode, to give you an added challenge.
Pretty sure I have forgotten to write about some of the updates in the below notes but never mind, there have been loads of them. More importantly, the game has had a ridiculous amount of playtesting compared to recent releases which has helped me to balance it a little better as well as uncover all manner of broken things.
PATCH NOTES
All-New Survival Mode A brand new way to play through the levels! This essentially removes the Checkpoints from the normal mode, so as soon as you die you have to go right back to the start of the level and redo any Blackout Zones that you had previously completed. Much more of a challenge and adds some replayability to the whole thing. Naturally, on Steam this also means a bunch more Achievements for you to collect.
New Damage Effect Making it much easier to tell when you have been attacked by a zombie, the screen now flashes up a ‘Damage’ graphic just to make it super, super obvious.
Chambers Station Car Park Revamp It has ramps now! Like an actual multi-story car park. Breaks the space up more effectively and just looks slightly more realistic (when viewed from above obviously)
General Level Decorations All levels have received additional decoration, just a few extra objects or things to make them look better. I won’t go into each one or exactly which areas have had a revamp because I didn’t write them all down and cannot be bothered to go back through and figure it out. There is just more stuff. Trust me.
Extra Doorway in Redfield Manor Library It was a little too easy to get fully trapped in this section so an additional doorway has been added to allow you to try and get round any zombies that have bunched up in the hallway
More Explosive Barrels! They were actually not in every single Blackout Zone so that has been very much addressed. Go blow more things up.
Sprinting While Aiming No Longer Possible If you sprinted and aimed at the exact same time then you could sometimes end up with your Aimed Weapon mode on while Sprinting and then it would kinda get stuck on. No more! Have sorted that out.
Aim Mode Turn Speed Reduced This is part of some general tweaking to the difficulty of the game and so now while you are in Aimed Mode (laser targeting and one-shot kills) you rotate the player more slowly. I found it was a little overpowered the ability to just full one-hit kill the zombies. I like to make you work for it.
Aimed Walk Speed Reduced And alongside the above change I have also reduced the speed at which the player could walk. Again, making it slightly riskier to go into Aimed Mode.
New Checkpoints Added Before Blackout Zones If you die in a Blackout Zone the checkpoint was usually either at the start of the level or just outside the previous Blackout Zone, have now changed this so the most recent Checkpoint is right outside the Blackout Zone that you died in. Lets you get right back into the action.
Weapon Spawn Locations Tweaked There are now only two in each area and I have hidden them a bit more. Makes it slightly more challenging but also forces the player to explore each Blackout Zone a little more, there was a fair bit of dead space that could just be fully ignored if you focus just on refuelling and powering up the doors.
Weapon Spawn Icons Makeover Just a slight jazzing up of the shape as well as changing the colours so the ammo and health are distinct from each other.
Removed Score Boosts Didn’t love these actually, they were dotted around the level but actually didn’t add much to the gameplay and so have been removed.
Ending Levels Somtime’s Gave Double Score Not even entirely sure how this happened? But I re-did the whole score calculation process and this seems to have stopped happening now.
Occasionally Couldn’t Finish Redfield Manor Due to the Trigger Volume not quite registering the player for some reason, you were sometimes unable to complete the third level. This has now been fixed!
Could Get Behind The Police Station This should not have been possible and could result in the player falling into the void of nothingness underneath the level. Has now been blocked off properly
Pavement Too High Outside Downtown Restaurant You could not walk onto it! Super annoying. Has been lowered.
You Were Unable To Shoot Through Open Blackout Doors on Valentine Forest Level This was due to trigger volumes being too high and the bullets reading them as having hit something, therefore they would disappear! Obviously not the case when the door is supposed to be open.
Reload Icon Now Disappears On Weapon Change It just stayed there before, even if you swapped to a gun that had loads of ammo in it. Now the icon will disappear but reappear should you then swap back to your low on ammo weapon.
More Zombie Models There was only one poor zombie before, now there are four variations which are randomly selected when a zombie spawns into the world
Zombies Damaged You Too Quickly Occasionally you could get from max health to dead far too quickly and all from just one zombie. This has been tweaked so the damage is in time with the zombie ‘attack’ animations.
Zombie Spawners Repositioned In almost every level and Blackout Zone these have been tweaked to allow for a more even spread of zombies and their routes to attack the player
Added Extra Spawner To Blackout Zones Five possible places the zombies can attack you from now within each Blackout Zone!
Zombies Spawning Outside The Prison In an area totally inaccessible to the player. Not very useful.
Zombie On A Wall In Redfield Manor a zombie would occasionally spawn up on a wall and not be able to get down nor could you shoot it.
Zombie On A Subway Train Very similar issue. Sometimes a few zombies would make their way onto the roof of the subway train within the Burton Line Subway level.
Blackout Door’s Have a Mesh Above The Main Door Just to make it look slightly less like you could probably jump over the door and not worry about having to power it up and stuff.
Helpful Yellow Cables Link All Blackout Doors & Power Consoles Makes it much easier to navigate from the consoles to the doors, they are not always right next to each other. Now you can just follow the yellow cable and you can find the exit.
Blackout Lights Mesh Improvement They now have a proper base to them! I mean, it is not a huge difference but it is better.
No More Skipping Music Tracks A few of the audio tracks stuttered as they started playing again and caused a notable hitch, this has now been removed and the music flows much more smoothly. Can barely tell it is the same thing on repeat mostly.
Generator, Blackout Door And Petrol Pump Now Makes Noise This was an oversight from previous versions, the generator actually makes some proper generator sounding noise now. The petrol pump is pumping petrol (shockingly) while the door makes some whirring ‘door opening’ noise. Makes it much easier to realise when these have stopped happening because the door is open or you ran out of fuel.
Zombies Groan That’s is pretty much it. They make weird noises. It is me. I am making the weird noises. I am so sorry.
Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.26 which gives us some lovely improvements under the hood.
Undead Blackout: Reanimated Edition is currently going through some huge changes in preparation for release on Xbox One. Less on the gameplay side and much more on the polish and optimisation side. This has been sorely lacking for a while now so it is about flippin’ time.
The original plan was just to launch with version 3.0 on PC and Xbox at the same time, but while going through some early optimisations I realised the game runs TERRIBLY on less powerful machines and so felt the need to push out some optimisation gains early for the PC crowd. Frankly, these should have been done ages ago so very much my bad.
This will then be the last patch Undead Blackout: Reanimated Edition receives before the launch of 3.0. Currently, that is planned for very early Autumn.
FULL PATCH NOTES
Adding Culling Volumes to the levels which is weird as they definitely used to be there. Somewhere in the many updates, they disappeared which is a bit of a disaster. A Culling Volume basically removes objects from the game when we don’t need them as the player is far away. The game can save on memory and performance by not rendering a bunch of floor tiles on the opposite side of the map to the player.
Removed Dynamic Shadowing from some foliage because it was causing some enormous hitches on the Xbox. Most notably on the trees, running near to them with your torch on causes the Frame Rate to absolutely die for a period. Changing the settings here has allowed them to be Culled without the Shadow disappearing from the world, which was a temporary issue I had to deal with. Overall, big performance improvement there.
Reduced the number of meshes in each level to save memory. And boy did we save some memory. On all levels, the number of Actors (things in the level) has been reduced by AT LEAST 50%. In some cases, it is well over 75%. This has been done through a combination of merging meshes where appropriate and creating new, larger meshes that are more fit for purpose. The result is less memory usage and far less strain on mid/low-level PCs.
Sewer Level is more claustrophobic now as a result of me making the tunnels a lot tighter. This gives a much better feel to this level and was something I realised while reducing the number of meshes in the level. This is much less to do with performance and much more to do with aesthetics.
It has been so long since I last wrote patch notes for Undead Blackout that I have accidentally released two patches and precisely no notes. And so here is the super-massive-combined patch notes for versions 2.1 and 2.2. They are a combination of absolutely boring things and some genuinely good updates for the game. Patch notes for 2.1 can be found at the bottom, but 2.2 is where the good stuff is. The core mechanic of the Blackout Zones has been redesigned and is loads more fun. Lots more quality of life improvements as well as some good old-fashioned bug fixing.
The plan now is to move onto some serious polish and fleshing out of existing features or modes as I really accelerate the Xbox version plans. It is currently running really well on the console and so the next major update for Steam will coincide with the release on console, hopefully sometime toward the end of the summer.
Full patch details below!
Blackout Zones have been redesigned and the outcome of this is the game increases both the fun and action by approximately 87%. This is according to some in depth data analysis I did. Honestly. Basically, the whole ‘Power up the door by holding down a button’ has been replaced with a somewhat similar but vastly superior mechanic. You now have to refuel a generator, switch it on which in turn switches on a bunch of lights, then turn on the door which will slowly open. Now once the fuel runs out, the lights switch of ( A BLACKOUT IF YOU WILL!) and you have to refuel again. The switching on of these things attracts the zombie horde, otherwise you get a steady stream of them coming into the area.
This ramping up of excitement/zombies works really well. You have to balance the risk and reward of how quickly you try and power everything up. Go crazy fast and you might be overwhelmed. Go slow and you score will be decreased by the end of the level as you took so long. Plus you still might randomly die anyway.
Redesigned Levels with the intention of funnelling you to the action much quicker. I have removed pretty much all of the more open spaces in between Blackout Zones as I found the player could end up getting lost or at least confused about which way to go. Funnelling them directly to the Blackout Zones, which is really where all the fun happens, makes so much more sense.
You can walk slowly while aiming now as I think the Blackout Zone tweaks meant the player vs zombie dynamic needed a little balancing. Being stuck still while aiming lead to you dying way too much.
Animated the opening titles to make the game seem fancy.
Added a Subway Car to the Subway cos I mean…that makes sense right? You need an actual Subway car in a Subway level right?
Tweaked audio for zombie footsteps as the ‘Dirt’ audio had no Sound Attenuation and so didn’t sound right. It was far too loud.
Player start on Station level was in the wrong place and if this has been there for a while then it basically meant if you died on the third Blackout Zone and then restarted, you would be stuck in some level geometry. Good stuff.
Improved functionality of the tutorial text in that it will just disappear on its own after a while. Previously you had to get to a certain spot in the first level to switch each promt off. Now it just times out and disappears.
A random UE4 man was in the Police Station and I cannot remember if I added him while testing this patch or if (as I suspect) he has just been hanging out there the entire time, minding his own business and providing me with something to measure height against. But he is now gone.
Raised the roof in the Prison but not in a fun, party way. In the very literal sense the roof mesh was far too low and clipped into the camera.
Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.25.1 mostly so I am all updated and ready to go with the Xbox version of the game which will be the next major patch just FYI!
All new logo! Yes, it is the big update everyone has been waiting for. The 4MB Interactive logo has been updated to the new 4MB Interactive logo, replacing the old 4MB Interactive logo.
Fixed bug where you could run while using Aimed Shot. Yeah, you should not have been able to do that. By mashing Fire and Aim at the same time you could trick the game and sprint around with the super-powerful aimed shot. Cheating. Pure cheating. Anyway, this is gone now.
Updated to Unreal Engine 4.23 which was good but in 2.2 we have updated to 4.25.1 so basically this is pointless.
After twelve months of dicking around and wasting time on boring “actual life stuff”, finally I have had the time to actually get Undead Blackout to the point I would like it to be at. This means I have rushed it onto Steam in time for the Summer Sale and while it still needs a little work the main thing is that the all-new and improved version of the game has arrived.
REIMAGINED. REBOOTED.
The game has been rebuilt from the ground up, many assets have of course been carried over but large chunks of the game are brand new. For all intents and purposes it is a ‘new’ game. Much closer to the kind of thing I was vaguely imagining like a million years ago.
The game has been built using the latest version of Unreal Engine 4 (4.22.3 if you were wondering) and with this comes loads of improvements without me really having to do anything at all. The game runs smoother and faster. Alongside these built in improvements I have actually done a bit of work myself and many of the systems in the game are better optimised as are the levels themselves. Built in a much better way, they require less memory than before and shall be optimised even further in due course.
The levels themselves, while a few are set in similar environments, have been totally changed. Gone are the three fairly open areas in which you had to hunt a key and in their place are various “Blackout Zones” and paths connecting them. The Blackout Zones now form the core part of the gameplay. Areas that player finds themselves trapped in and can only escape by powering up a big old metal door. Naturally of course, these areas are teeming with zombies so you have to balance powering the door up with taking them out or running away from them.These are the only areas of the game now in total darkness, everywhere else has a bit of moonlight or a fire or something to help you.
The game is much more “arcadey” now. Zombies drop ammo, score boosts and health. You increase your multiplier by killing them and lose it once they successfully attack you. I was caught a little between trying to be a top-down Resident Evil and just a twin-stick shooter previously and it left the game worse off. Now we are purely arcade with the whole twist of it being pretty damn dark.
The zombies are a lot dumber. This might come as a shock to you but the AI in the earlier version was actually pretty decent. Zombies would wander around and react to you running past or investigate gunshots. The problem was that this was actually no fun. A lot of the time they just wandered straight past you while in the next room.
So now they are dumb. They just head straight for you. Can smell you a mile off or something. This might be less “realistic” but it is loads more fun. Provided you like shooting zombies.
The other major difference is that the melee weapons are gone. I loved the idea of having melee weapons, but again, it just wasn’t that fun. You could spend ages looking for a gun and getting annoyed that you died so the decision was made to scrap the axe and give players a pistol by default. A pistol with infinite ammo.
There are still Assault Rifles and Shotguns dotted about but you will at least be able to fend off the Undead with your trust pistol should you feel the urge. It has made the game more fun, more fast paced and actually more skill based seeing as you can one-shot kill the zombies when using the Aiming mode.
2.1 AND BEYOND
The game then is at a point I can say I don’t hate it. Absolutely I have pushed the update before it is 100% ready but I wanted to make the most of the sale so version 2.1 is not going to be far behind.
There will be a lot of quality of life updates, nice little animations added in here and there. Some of the levels also look a little barren so I will be making them much more interesting. And of course, a whole load of bugs will be getting smashed to death.
I am looking to get version 2.1 out in July at some point while 2.2, which is going to feature a funky new mode, will arrive in August.
Our previous blog some 7 days ago was all about how we are moving into the Alpha build of Undead Blackout. The basic blocks were there but now literally everything else needed adding in. Well, the good news is that this process is almost done! Huzzah! Drinks all round.
The best thing about this phase of development is that you stop working on fun things like shooting and running and dying and instead work on… menus. Save Game systems. Game statistics. Other things that are really useful but oh so very dull to actually work on.
However, all these things are so incredibly important. If you cannot navigate the menu with a pad then Xbox are not going to be happy. If the scores don’t save properly then that is just rubbish. The difference this time is that I am working on these things now and not leaving them all until last. All the nice visual stuff and animations are coming later. The bones of the game need to be firmly in place first.
So our main menu works with a pad. There are sections for high scores per level and overall stats. All those stats and scores are updating and saving correctly. What else have I been working on over the past week?
Rock Out With Your Block Out
Originally I was planning on getting one level blocked out, then working on all the other things before moving onto any other level work. However, I totally didn’t do that at all. I got into the flow with blocking out the levels and so I managed to block out all ten. My desire was to properly design each level but given I am working in this funky new “circular design” way, I resisted.
Previously I have spent ages on the level design way too early in the whole process. I spent hours trying to get a ceiling tile material to look right when zombie AI was still not working properly. This is dumb and you should not do it.
But all ten levels are mapped out and have the relevant triggers in the relevant places. Essentially the game then is very, very nearly “done”. You could play from level one to level ten, record high scores, kills loads of zombies, and finish the game. Although nothing would happen when you finish the game as I have not designed that yet.
That has actually been an incredibly ponderous task to complete, moving around the various triggers and making sure the BluePrints are all linked up correctly so that TriggerVolume7 correctly sets BlackoutBlocker4 to move and not accidentally BlackoutBlocker5. But game development is definitely not all fun, exciting explodey things. It is a lot of tedious stuff that in the end is 100% worth it.
Looking toward a Beta future
I have to finish getting the menu working 100%. Currently, the Pause Menu doesn’t work at all with a gamepad. Once that is done there will be a thorough playtest on both PC and Xbox One.
In theory, everything should work fine. The mechanics behind each level are the same, just in different places. It is all working on the main level where I am testing so the others should also be fine. But a proper test will find out the truth of that.
If I can complete each level without too much hassle then Undead Blackout will be ready to move into Beta. This is the time when I can spend hours on ceiling tile materials. Obviously not the most useful visual feature in a top-down game but whatever.
The list of tasks I have for this portion is filled with little visual flourishes and ideas. Of course, it also has things like “Actually build the level so it isn’t a crapload of white blocks”. An important task I am sure you can agree. However, I do see the appeal of games that go for a very clean, sterile environment as part of their visual style. Maybe I can do that next time.
We announced the other week that Undead Blackout was getting a massive overhaul so I should probably let you know how that is going, right? Doesn’t really matter what you say at this point as that is what I am going to do.
At the moment we are in the Alpha stage of development and looking to get all of the main mechanics up to a reasonable level. At this stage I am only looking to flesh out one level then once everything functions properly within that one level, I can move onto the other nine. Yes, nine levels! I am increasing the level count by four as I am just so generous like that.
Things like controls and zombies and shooting are all back and working at a decent level so I won’t spend too long talking about those. What new stuff then has been added or where have we been experimenting?
One thing I was very keen to add to this version was some other way to damage the zombies, the cliched exploding red barrels seemed like an easy win on that front and so I have implemented a very rough early version of this. It is simply a BluePrint actor with a Health value which decreases as you shoot it, once it hits zero BOOM. Radial Damage is applied to everyone who is nearby (including the player). This will kill zombies who are close enough and send them flying across the screen, it’s a bit over the top but I like it.
I have also changed the way that ammo and health pick-ups work. Instead of being dotted around the level in random places, they are now dropped by zombies entirely at random. Ammo appears more often than Health and so far it is working really nicely, cannot see any need to tweak it. The rationale behind this is that I want players to have more ammo and be encouraged to take on the zombies, it was a bit too easy to just evade them and finish the levels in the previous version.
Another decision which kind of feeds into this is that I have ditched the melee weapons, you have a pistol by default which has infinite ammo, but needs reloading. The pistol is relatively weak and won’t do too much good against a load of zombies but is more than enough to pick off a few. Really you need the bigger weapons to make any significant headway. Again, this is a change that has increased the ‘fun factor’ of the game quite considerably.
The previous Undead Blackout had a targeting reticule on the screen and this was how you aimed at the zombies. I have ditched that for this version, instead of relying on a laser sight for all of the weapons. This works much better and thanks to the way I have set it up, it actually works like a proper laser, extending out as far as it can before hitting an object. This also changes colour when the player goes into the ‘Aimed” mode (in which you get one-shot kills but cannot move very quickly).
Perhaps the absolute coolest thing (personally speaking) that I have done involves the two-player mode. I am ditching the Versus and Survival modes for this and concentrating just on the co-op mode. Way, way back in the history of development on this I wanted the game to have a dynamic split-screen feature, if the players were close together they would share a screen if they were far apart then it would split the screen. However, the only way to do this is through C++, and at the time, I was totally crap at C++.
Today, however, I am only slightly crap at C++. This means that I have managed to add (thanks to a very good tutorial which can be found here) a dynamic split-screen feature.
The scoring system has been revamped, given this has a more arcade slant than before. You now get a multiplier that goes up the more zombies you kill and remain free from damage. Soon as you take a hit it revers back down to 1 and you start over. I am sure you don’t need me to explain to you how a multiplier works but I have done it now so whatever.
Running out of things to say but I am sure there is still loads of other stuff I have done and not mentioned here yet. The most important thing I guess is that the game is very nearly at a point where the main mechanics are in place and working perfectly. If you die, everything respawns and resets. You can navigate from the menu to the test level. You can pick your character. You can shoot, reload, and change your weapon. It is all coming together nicely.
Looking forward now the most important thing is to put together one actual level and make sure that all the elements that are fun in my crappy little test arena also work well on a proper level. This will also give me a chance to test the all-new ‘Blackout’ mechanic which will finally make the title of the game actually relevant. More on that one next time when I can actually show it off.
In the meantime please enjoy this incredibly rubbish video of me just testing a few bits of a build from a little while ago. It might not look like it yet, but the game is massively, massively improving from what it currently is on Steam. Not sure on timelines yet but things are progressing quicker than I anticipated so I am hoping to get this done before the Autumn game tsunami.
It is safe to say that Undead Blackout has not been a huge success and this should come as no surprise to anyone at all, least of all me. When the game first released on February 3rd, 2017, I was exhausted and the game was an unfinished mess. It sold a few copies but not enough for the gold-plated Lamborghini I crave and I had to settle for a gold-plated Vauxhall Corsa.
The game was then given a massive update that landed just before Christmas and while this improved and fixed so many elements, it still hasn’t reached a level where I am happy enough to let it go. Crucially the game is slated to release on Xbox One through the ID@Xbox program but it just does not work on Xbox One. Not ideal really.
Part of me wants to just let it go and move on, another part of me wants to go back to the drawing board (for like the tenth time) and get it right. So guess which part has won this internal battle? That’s right, Undead Blackout has gone back to the now battered drawing board for one final time.
Over the past month or so I have been putting together an all-new version of the game which is currently sitting in a pre-alpha stage, ready to move into alpha. That is to say, the mechanics are all present but there is only one crappy level and the whole thing looks ugly as sin. Crucially it is working absolutely perfectly on the Xbox One dev kit.
Every element of the game is going to be improved upon but perhaps where the biggest change will be seen is in the design of the levels. The existing levels were quite open in many instances and this led to a lot of wandering around looking for keys and ammo and often completely failing to find either. Also given the zombies had their own AI-powered wandering you could often fail to run into them altogether.
The new levels will be a lot more focused. I am not completely ditching the open aspects in favour of some crappy top-down corridor shooter, instead, the levels will adopt a more even flow, taking the player through some narrower sections before opening out into a larger area and so on. The current plan is for 10 new levels, many of which will be based on existing level themes while a couple will be all new areas.
The gameplay is heading in a much more arcadey direction, the slight “top-down Resident Evil” vibe is very much gone and this is much more toward the Smash TV x Left4Dead end of the spectrum. Even in the exceptionally basic test arena I currently have working, the game is arguably already more fun due to the increase in action.
Many other parts of the game will be thoroughly polished and improved upon and I won’t bother listing them here as that is just boring but shall detail them as we go through this rebuild process. I am hoping for weekly dev blogs and lots of updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
One final super important point (especially if you are thinking about buying the game), I fully expect that once the game has been massively improved and the amount of content has increased that I will push the price up from $3.99 to $4.99. Not a huge increase of course but still, if you want to save yourself a small amount of money then grab the game now.
