In the spirit of Thanksgiving we wanted to start off by thanking everyone who has been supporting us. Thank you to our backers, the moderation team, the content creators & contributors we work with, our fans, and of course the crow gang. You're the most important part of this game and we couldn't have gotten to this point without you. When work on Hide Or Die started about a year ago we never could have imagined that we would have left our jobs in Singapore, moved back to the USA, started a company, and hired employees. We're thankful beyond words for giving us this opportunity to build this game with you.
Beta Phase 1: Post-Mortem
On November 11th we concluded our first beta phase; a total of 3,354 players participated with average match times of 41 minutes and 27 seconds. The goal of beta phase 1 was to evaluate the performance of our dedicated servers under load. This is vital to help us better anticipate server loads for future deployments, including release. For this reason we exclusively had servers available in US central to focus the stress on these specific servers. This sort of testing is critical for us to do at an early stage so future launches can go smoothly.
That being said, we did experience server instability the first couple days of beta phase 1. The data we gathered couldn't have been more valuable and we appreciate everyone's patience while we sorted out and patched changes into the server build. With the subsequent changes in the last couple weeks we feel that we are in a much better place to ensure server stability in the future.
We received a total of 1,019 bug reports - thankfully a lot of duplicates :) - Many of these were fixed and patched in during the beta so thank you for the prompt reports. Others of course will be fixed as we go forward with development. I'm sure you'll give us a new list in the next testing phase.
Because we like no sleep and grey hair, we did something that you are generally not supposed to do during a beta - patch in new features. We added in collectible supplies, opened up a cosmetic store where you could use those supplies, and added in a selfie mode. There were some issues around your supplies not updating in the menu and unlocked clothing items not showing up after purchasing, but we are glad to say that those bugs are now squashed. Selfie mode ended up being a big hit and was legit. We loved seeing some of your shots posted in discord and look forward to more in the future! Here are some of our favorites:
We allowed TydeTyme and SleevedBiker to post videos about their beta phase 1 experience and you can find them both here:
Gameplay Feedback
Although overall feedback received was quite positive , we know that some changes need to be made; it isn't quite there yet. There are the obvious things like more content such as varied hunters, unlocks, perks, and progression that are in development. We want to try and nail down how people felt playing the game so we can make the changes necessary to make this game the best it can be. We have put together a short survey for you to fill out. We can not stress how important it is that you fill this out. Please stop reading and fill it out now, the update will still be here for you when you get back:
https://goo.gl/forms/Zxp8cJpXu7qa6Kwf2
Future Beta Phases Schedule
As laid out previously, we will be having multiple beta testing phases. With that we have to make some alterations to the scheduling. What we planned on doing was to do a week of testing, 3 weeks of development, a week of testing, 3 weeks of development, etc. We believe there are still some large changes that have to be made to the game that prevent us from keeping that sort of testing schedule. Once we get your feedback from the survey above we'll reevaluate the testing schedule. Here are the soft dates we have scheduled for the future testing periods: Beta Phase 1.5: We want to quickly stress test our new server configuration. -December 7th-8th or December 14th - 15th Beta Phase 2: Test new hunters, gameplay alterations, progression rates, and perks. -Mid January
Beta Phase 3: Test the entire game front to back with majority of promised features implemented. -Early March
We have no hard date for when you will be able to pledge support on our website again, but it will most likely be sometime between Beta Phase 1.5 and Beta Phase 2.
Levels: Carnival
Although Chris hasn't been streaming due to his move to Texas and beta phase 1, the Carnival map has made some great progress. Most of the core level art is finished, textured, and ready for its first detail pass. We took some shots with bright lightening so you can better see some of the art.
New Feature: UI
We finally got around to getting a more fleshed out and unified UI to show player inventory. This inventory UI system works with both hunters and survivors. We also changed how we display stamina by moving the display system from bottom left corner to the left side of your crosshair. This stamina bar only appears when it is regenerating or about halfway depleted to give you a warning. This appearance change integrates well into our UI style, is less intrusive by only appearing when needed, and more easily accessible. You can see an image of the stamina bar changes and a short video of the inventory in action below:
Backer Rewards: Player Heads
We have improved our pipeline for getting backer heads into the game and have had some promising results. We have facial morph targets working, so if time permits we could get some rudimentary facial animations in or at the very least some expressions during critical moments of gameplay. We are quite happy with the quality we have achieved and here you can see https://www.twitch.tv/neversurrendr in game looking as fly as the crow gang:
And of course the facial expressions:
We also have been working on further fleshing out our hair tech, integrating it with a backer head template so that all hair styles can be used on all backer heads.
Here is a video showcasing some hair color customization for your characters.
Characters: Stitches
Stitches is our latest hunter being implemented into the game. In the video below you can see the first pass of implementation. Animations, textures, gameplay, etc are all heavy work in progress. - Primary melee weapon: Two pairs of scissors - Secondary weapon: Jack in the box (we're still prototyping this weapon's effects) - Ability: Pounce - right mouse button leaps high into the air and left mouse button attacks. Best used for locating survivors and bringing death from above. Stitches movement allows him to wall climb by running up to a wall that has bloody handprints and holding down the jump key. He will be a very deadly killer in some maps while being at a disadvantage in others that lack buildings. We're excited to see how people play with this hunter.
That is the end of this update! We hope you all have a great holiday weekend! See you all soon!