Hello friends,

Next week, on October 27 we will be releasing the Halloween update. It features a new map location, sniper rifle ballistics tweaks, and a time-limited Halloween themed weapon skin event.

There's also something very bright in the works. A few screenshots:







See you next week!

Hello friends!

Alex here with a brief update on the latest and greatest. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks on administrative & planning tasks as we look to scale up the development of Deadside.

I wanted to talk to everyone here and give some transparency to the things we’re working on/planning around. This isn’t an official roadmap or feature list, this is an overview of the challenges we’ll be going through as we ramp up. Think of this as a behind the curtain look at game development and the discussions happening. And let us know in the comments if you'd want more updates like this.

Before we can start hiring new members, we’re doing an in-depth evaluation of the code with a co-development team. It’s not always a good idea to start rapidly hiring new people as you need to identify the positions you need. This co-dev team (I won’t name them yet) has previously helped us on several Unreal Engine 4 projects (Deadside’s game engine) and worked on AA-level shooters. The idea here is to have a team come in and help evaluate the amount of work, start helping the original team, and gradually form a structure within Bad Pixel itself. There are engineering challenges which are difficult to scope out, and due to this we don’t know exactly what kind of profiles/positions we need to hire for until we evaluate the amount of work. This is already in progress.

The biggest challenge will likely be the netcode in general. So far we’ve discovered that the main limitation for the game comes from the server-side code. Things like storage are limited mostly due to this. We do want to give players more boxes in bases. Player count is also currently limited by some fundamental bottlenecks. These challenges are all solvable, they will just need time and resources.

Vehicles have been a highly requested feature in Deadside. While I can’t speak for the team on if/when, I can talk you through the backend challenges that arise from implementing such features. First off, if we talk about ground transportation, the biggest issue is that we would want the server to have authority over the vehicle. The server needs to verify movement of the object, and give minimal “trust” to the peer (player). Otherwise cheaters could have a field day - feeding data into the server and you’d see cars flying all over the place. For collisions to work properly, a lot of work needs to be done and tested in live circumstances. In its current implementation, ground vehicles would feel very “rubberbandy”. A stepping stone for this could be vehicles that don’t require collisions - floating or flying ones. So expect a stepping stone before ground vehicles would be considered.

The second challenge with vehicles is building a system that “binds” passengers to the object, so that everyone is moving in sync.

And third is game design. There needs to be lots of thought put into how vehicles would spawn, where they are kept, how/if they decay, and most importantly - where to go using them.

I anticipate both the netcode and vehicle challenges will collide and require some work under the hood, so we will need to balance that with other features that can currently be done without issues (i.e. new locations).

Like many of you I fell in love with Deadside because of its gunplay. The only real challenge we have there is to figure out how to increase the TTK (time to kill) by snipers. Nerfing the weapons would be an obvious choice, however might not be the most fun. We’re exploring different options here - from sound design to more ways to med -- to more “out there” ideas like tactical shields (tell us in the comments what comes to mind when you imagine that!)

Speaking of sound design - in many games, you hear the gun pop before a bullet lands or wizzes by. In real life, it’s actually the opposite - a bullet flies faster than the speed of sound, especially in sniper rifles. So this is a question of realism vs practicality. If you could hear the pop sooner, it gives you a moment to react to sniper fire. In reality though, you’d hear the pop post-factum.

1. Raiding. We believe it’s the best fun you can have in an online shooter when a raid is happening on the map. We also believe there should be a system that gradually decays bases when owners have left, so that at one point you could offline abandoned bases. This creates both gameplay for non-confrontational players, and eases the servers. This would need to come with more tools to raid.
   
2. Building. We need more things to do in the bases, alongside building more interesting structures.
   
3. Optimization. There’s already a plan in place for an optimization pass for the game. We will find a time to plan that in as we scale the team up.

We’ve done some housekeeping on the Steam page, and I hope you’ll enjoy some of the community-picked screenshots. The page description has been updated, a couple of pieces of missing artwork were added, and we’re working on a redesigned website that’d also host a press kit for influencers.


This is a nutshell a summary of the latest behind the scenes developments without talking about what the development team is actually working on right now. I hope it gives you an idea of how we think about the future of Deadside, and would love to hear what you think in the comments.

I also hangout on the official discord - https://discord.gg/u4pYuZ9g4F

Thanks for reading
See you in the game

PS some work in progress visuals

Friends, we have exciting news to share with all of you. We've partnered up with tinyBuild to help accelerate the development of Deadside. Please meet Alex, CEO of tinybuild who has more details:

Hello everyone!

Alex Nichiporchik from tinyBuild here - we’re a video game developer and publisher,.

Last year, I started playing Deadside. Much like many of you here, I was excited about every single update. So much so that I got in touch with the fine folks at Bad Pixel to see if we could help in some shape or form. We started chatting with the team, and turns out they were going through a lot of the things we’ve been through -- challenges of scaling a team, establishing communication lines with the community, excitingly watching every single update get played by users (and the adrenaline of hotfixes), and more. Many of the teams tinyBuild started working with were just a few people, and grew into dozens.

The video games industry exists because of great people, and I can tell you that the team at Bad Pixel are great at what they do. And what I love is helping teams figure out how to scale up, and deliver upon expectations of really engaged fans.

We have seen how we can help, and decided to join forces and help Bad Pixel develop Deadside into a full release, getting more frequent updates out and helping the team scale up. Bad Pixel is joining tinyBuild, and will remain a separate studio working on Deadside, with the backend support from our side.

Let's do this!

The update will be available from 11am UTC / 4am PDT

All changes and fixes:

- Automatic gameplay activities frequency increase depending on players online
(Can be turned off in the Admin Panel)
- New convoy bots logic
- Convoy sniper boss can spawn with Mosin instead of VSD
- Sound effects of distance gunshots reworked
- Some forest areas near the center and north of the map reworked
- Fixed grenades sometime doesn't play their effects/sounds
- Fixed "Ghost Footsteps"
- Fixed some bots AI settings
- Fixed client crashes when sorting servers list
- Fixed UI problems on very low resolutions
- Fixed blurred inventory sprites for some items
- Fixed: ammo dissapears when unequipping extended mags
- Fixed: players registered on a base can't remove some objects
- Fixed: players can't access a base they are registered on after changing their steam username
- Fixed: Convoy case marker doesn't update after picking up a backpack wich contains this case
- Fixed: Secondary or tertiary weapon mods are equipped on the first weapon after login if its mod slots are empty
- Fixed: "Left" and "Right" keybind names are mixed up
- Fixed: Character stays on a stair after it was destroyed
- Fixed: Character can climb the stairs of the object that's not built yet
- Fixed level design bugs

- Maximum climb height increased
- Restored the ability to climb when jumping
- Fixed basebuilding bugs for registered players
- Level design fixes (flying objects, trees, rocks collisions etc)
- Fixed Airdrop spots on new territories
- Fixed AI settings for some types of bots
- Increased chances of loot spawn
- Fixed spawn of skinned weapons from the bunker containers
- Added skins for MR5
- Fixed a bug when you take an item into hands and then drop equipment piece in which it was stored
- Traders now buy up almost all items, including tracksuits, broken flashlights, rags etc
- Explosions should not damage characters on PVE servers
- The detonator's range has been reduced to 100 meters
- New territories sound design has been improved

- After death of the character thirst and hunger rates are restored to 50
- Decreased food and water consumption during sprint and running
- Slightly decreased damage if you have zero thirst and hunger
- Traders are now buying new weapons and equipment
- Fixed incorrect message in a chatlog when you suicide
- Shooting stops if you press Shift during it
- Fixed a localization
- Fixed a sound delay for the shooting and reloading
- Fixed various problems with collisions (the barrack, rocks, port crane)
- Fixed animations for character's movement with a weapon while crouching
- Fixed animation for jumping with a grenade

Friends, as we prepare for the tests, we can show you some of the graphic content changes.
The update 0.2.0 will include not only new locations but also you will see some changes in the already familiar ones.

Beregovoy is getting an expansion, receiving new locations and becoming more immersive.
And 4-storied buildings have got new interiors!

Hello everyone, team Bad Pixel is here.

First, we want to thank all of you for the patience and support, which you’ve been giving to us all this time.

Now for the most recent update from our development team.
Preparations for the release of the update 0.2.0 are in the final stages and we’re sure that your expectations and hopes have not been in vain!

As we’ve mentioned before, this update will be the biggest and the most extensive so far. The changes, which it brings to the game, will take the gameplay to the whole new level.
We have not only added a lot of new mechanics and content, but we have also reworked some of the already existing aspects, which allowed us get rid of the old bugs and improve the quality of the game in general.

So, there are a lot of changes and everything needs to be tested properly. We are happy to tell you that first stage of the testing will begin very soon and we’re counting on your help.

We will let you know about the start of testing separately. Stay with us and follow the news!

Here we have screenshots of a new big location "Factory" from different angles. This location is currently in the development.

Dear friends, we congratulate all of you on the anniversary of the project!
In honor of this significant day we decided to take end result of the development of the update 0.1.2

0.1.2 update has been in the development for a long time and you probably grew tired of waiting. We’ve been publishing news about our work progress all this time, and now we want to sum it up and briefly tell you everything about all the features that you will find in the game.
We’re purposely not going to go into too much details because we don’t want this announcement to be very heavy and overloaded, but there will be more separate news describing every feature in the nearest future.

Skins

We’ve noticed the enthusiasm with which many of you began storming the bunker in a search of weapons with the unique skins, and we’ve decided to develop the skin system, which will give us an opportunity to regularly add new skins and for you - to collect them. In the upcoming update new special items will appear – “skin patterns”, which you will be able to find in the same bunker or in the other activities. Upon receiving this pattern player will get the ability to add it to his skin library and then paint his weapons or equipment with it. In future (not in 0.1.2!) we’re planning to give the ability to create skins to players themselves.



Steam terminal

To allow you to transfer your items between servers and even trade some of them, such as item skins, we’ve developed a special Steam terminal which will allow you to move game items from your in-game inventory to your Steam inventory and the other way around. Of course, such operations will not be free and require special game currency, which is not so easy to get. At first only skin trading will be available, and only after we make sure that this system doesn’t have any exploits and it doesn’t break the economy, then we’ll start to expand the list of items, available for trading.



New items

In the upcoming update there will be a lot of new items added, we’ve already announced some of them, but their number is constantly growing and that’s why we will release the complete overview in one of our next announcements, as of now the list looks like this:

- New military suit
- Ghillie suit
- New combat helmet
- New balaclava
- New weapons (FN Scar and Famas)
- Many modules for weapon modifications (extended mags, muzzle brakes, silencers, sights)
- An explosive (trip wire and radio-controlled explosive device, which will also be used in the base raids)
- A compass, helping players to coordinate their firing while playing in squad.









New activity

In order to make the process of getting new items more fun we’ve developed the whole new activity called “Convoy” which will require both PvE and PvP skills from you. Implementation details will definitely be changed, but the essence is this: the special forces units will appear on the map periodically, traveling different routes and you will see them on the map. These dangerous groups headed by the commander will carry a special container. It is your job to intercept the cargo, destroy this squad and receive your award by delivering a container to a certain point on the world map. It sounds simple, right? It definitely seems like it: you kill bots and deliver a container. But there is a one small detail - this container can be constantly seen on the map, even if it is in the player inventory, so those who want to ruin the holiday for the owner need to simply come to the marker, kill the owner and pick up the container (or get ambushed themselves)



New territory

We don’t want convoys to walk the same roads over and over again, that’s why starting with this update we are going to expand the map! The game world will expand more to the south and these territories will introduce you to new settlements, a bunker and a large industrial area bordering a seaport with the huge cranes, which are very convenient and attractive places for camping. Besides, some existing villages will be significantly expanded, they will get the new houses and other objects.





Base raids

And, finally, the most anticipated feature – base raids! Our system will be somewhat different from those you’re used to seeing in the other games, because we want to exclude passive gameplay, when attackers can raid a base of an offline player without difficulties. But the process of a raid itself will be classic, with using explosives as a tool, which are quite hard to get.
To increase the value of bases and, as a consequence, the need to protect them, we introduce the registration system: the base owner will be able to allow his friends to use his base (including building it) along with all the features, that are available, for example, respawning at the base. In addition to that, starting from this update, game will have special modules for the base, which will give the registered players an ability to perform special actions that only they will be able to do!
You can read more about raid system and registration system by following this link: https://steamcommunity.com/app/895400/discussions/0/3112526089306948932/



P.S.
Anticipating your questions regarding transport, we want to mention that some things, that are currently in development, will not be included in the 0.1.12 update.
The transport system is among them, but we’ve been working on it for some time and we can already demonstrate the results.



We’re not yet ready to give you exact deadline by which the transport will appear in the game, since the system is quite complex and needs a thorough work.