Aug 27, 2020

A New Civilization Update | Available now!

Endzone - A World Apart - Assemble_Skoddy

Greetings, survivors!

With the sixth update for Endzone - A World Apart a couple of changes come into play. We have reworked a system that dates back to the Closed Beta and needed an overhaul. When implementing the Confidence System, we deliberately built in advantages and disadvantages early on, which should have a significant influence on the flow of the game and the player's decisions. With the previous system, this effect was unfortunately hardly noticeable, or expressed itself mainly through negative influences. The reworked system now brings much more depth and complements the Gameplay with meaningful and credible needs of the settlers and, of course, their reaction to fulfilling or not fulfilling them. We also aimed on making Endzone easier to observe and read. With two new Heatmaps, the created electricity network can be surveyed better, and the newly implemented attractiveness of the settlement can be tracked.

With this Update, we enable the possibility of an Autosave. It is disabled by default, but can be activated manually in the settings. You can also change the time interval, in which the Autosave saves your current game. Right now the system can hold up to 5 automatically saved savegames per session. After reaching this number, older saves are automatically deleted.

User Interface: Added a new UI for Confidence and overhauled the confidence system. Confidence is now divided into 3 sections: Negative, Neutral, and Positive confidence. The Negative and Positive sections are further divided into 3 Tiers. Slipping into the negative confidence zone will cause riots in your settlement and people may start to leave. Being in the positive confidence zone will give you benefits such as special side missions.
User Interface: Added a new Analytic View for Electricity. This view helps you to view and analyze your electricity network without having to click on individual buildings. It displays valid power line connections and highlights all power consumers and producers.
User Interface: Added a new Analytic View for Attractiveness: Since buildings now have different Attractiveness values and your settlers react to them, it is important to have a clear overview on how buildings affect the attractiveness of your settlement and, therefore, your settlers’ confidence.
User Interface: Added special notifications when a seed or a new technology has been unlocked. In addition, a new notification triggers when new settlers are joining your settlement.
User Interface: Added a food variety indicator to show how many different food sources are available in the settlement. Having different food sources was always important for the health of the individual settler, but it was never really properly displayed.
Settlers: Added Birth Control as part of the functionality unlocked when upgrading your town center to level 2. Birth Control will result in a negative confidence debuff, but also prevent any new births for a certain period of time.
Buildings: Added the kitchen which allows your settlers to produce processed food/meals and can help to withstand a food shortage.
Buildings: Added 5 decorative buildings to the game that also contribute to the attractiveness of an area.
Expeditions: Added sound effects to all expeditions for better immersion. When making a decision for an expedition, there are sets of sound effects to complement your actions.
Savegames: Added optional AutoSave functionality to the game. You can enable AutoSave and a timing interval in the Options menu.
Achievements: Added 17 new achievements to the game.
Side Missions: Added 17 new side missions to the game.
Music: Added 1 new music track to the game.
Social Media: Added several social media icons in the main menu with direct links to Endzone.

Statistics: Temporary Storeroom and Warehouse are now contributing to statistics.
Statistics: The UI of the statistics window now works better with different aspect ratios.
Buildings: Orchards now correctly change their seed. Beware: trees are immediately chopped down when selecting a new seed, but you’ll also get some wood out of it.
Buildings: Fixed coal pile not marked as blocking during building placement.
Buildings: Fixed wind effect for the School.
Buildings: Fixed possible errors caused by the building system.
Buildings: The inspector for farms now shows “Hemp” instead of “Food” to signal that hemp is not a food resource.
Buildings: Hemp is now correctly decontaminated in all storage buildings.
Settlers: Fixed possible error when a pub is among the possible visitable buildings.
Settlers: Prevent error when a settler is living in a non existing house on startup.
Expeditions: The tool requirement for one of the Endzone expeditions now increases the chance as expected.
Expedition Post: Expedition Post now gives correct feedback when the production limit is reached or inventory is full.
Side Missions: Fixed several missing headlines for Side Missions.
Feedback (Stomt): Fixed that shortcuts were still fired in the background, when the feedback popup was opened.

Electricity: Warehouses, Cisterns, Irrigation Plants, and the Weather Station no longer consume power. This was done since they did not have any gameplay related effects.
Electricity: Settlers working at Gatherer’s Cabins, Herbal Huts, Forester Lodges, Scrapyards, and Hunting Lodges now work faster if their production building has power connected.
Electricity: A Power Line now loses all connections if it is in a demolished state, making it clearer as to why a power grid might be malfunctioning.
User Interface: The "?"-button in building inspectors now shows the building tooltip instead of only title and description, so that all the info is right there.
User Interface: Changed icons of some happiness buffs.
Balancing: Tweaked balancing values for protective clothing and tools.
Balancing: Doubled the wood cost for metal tools.
Buildings: Created new visuals for the tailor building.
Buildings: Changed visuals for the tank to be more immersive and fitting to the game’s story timeline.
Buildings: Damaged buildings no longer show a large and clumsy UI in their inspector but are marked as “damaged” with a visual indicator on top. Additionally, the condition bar below the icon of the building now provides detailed information about the repair status in its tooltip.
Glossary: Updated and added glossary entries for new and existing buildings.
Research: Added the kitchen as a researchable technology.
Performance: Ported entity tracing to a faster GPU solution.
Sandstorm: Sandstorm no longer does percentile damage, so that hit points of buildings actually have an impact now.
Side Missions: Tweaked Overloaded mission, so it only triggers if there is no battery connected at all.
UI: Goals that involve the production or storage of resources now indicate whether the production limit of that resource prevents the goal from being solved.

With this update we have significantly revised the confidence system, so that there is now a clear added value in both positive and negative directions. Confidence was for a long time a value that should be kept in positive territory, but was difficult to bring into negative territory through the regular game flow. Mainly differences arose due to the death of a relative of a settler, which of course could not be averted. The system therefore offered only a small added value and was rather used or regarded as an accessory.
Through the refurbishment, Confidence is now a sensitive system, which is influenced by each individual settler in the settlement. Each settler has his own list of needs that can be met, not met or triggered. How happy an individual settler is now proportionally contributes to the overall Confidence of the settlement. This means that an average is calculated, which can effect which missions or actions are triggered and can influence the behavior of the settlers in a negative way as well as in a positive way. The new Confidence System is staggered in 3 sections, each consisting of 3 tiers which are in the negative, neutral and positive range.

This value is influenced by existing buildings, as well as food and events within the settlement. Confidence can fluctuate. The neutral area can be seen as a buffer zone in which the player has the possibility to protect himself from sliding into the negative area or to take effective steps to change into the positive area.

A well-known problem in Endzone was the readability of the electricity network. Electricity poles are not easy to recognize in the turmoil and also the overview of the connected power line quickly left a lot to be desired in a larger settlement. With the new Heatmap for electricity, buildings can now be distinguished more easily. Connections and consumption are also marked and can now be observed more easily. The change in readability, which was very positive for us, inspired us to introduce another Heatmap to illustrate the Attractiveness. In this view, the attractiveness of individual buildings is also shown very simply and schematically. It also shows how other buildings influence the status even before construction.

Electricity Heatmap

Attractiveness Heatmap

This update has only added one building to the world of Endzone, but it was intended to help new players in particular. Also, the proposal has been submitted many times as feedback, so we were happy to follow up on the request. Oh, and we redesigned the Tailor for better visual feedback and a more suitable presentation:

Tailor

Kitchen

The Kitchen can be explored as a building and allows the player to increase the amount of valuable food for his settlement significantly by using a simple recipe. 10 units of food and 10 units of water can be processed in the kitchen to 100 units of food. It doesn't matter which food is used to create it. In addition, dishes that are produced in the kitchen are counted as variations in food and thus contribute to the diversity in the settlers' diet. Up to 5 cooks can work in the kitchen, but the amount of processed food does not increase proportionally from the fourth cook onwards, but increases slightly less.

Food Variety icon

Processed Food icon

Together with the new Confidence System, the first Decorative Elements are now available in Endzone. Decorations beautify the settlement by increasing its attractiveness. The 5 new elements have their own construction costs and can theoretically be placed infinitely often. Decoration buildings are not explicitly visited or viewed by settlement to give a bonus; the effect is permanent and passive.

New Decorations

We know that there are a few more things we need to address, and we are listening to your feedback. We're trying to address all the important issues in a timely manner and make the game as a whole more understandable and fair. However, it is important to remember that Endzone - A World Apart is a survival game, so we have made it challenging with full intention.

- Your Team von Gentlymad & Assemble Entertainment

Changelog Version - 0.7.7544.27831

Endzone - A World Apart will be streamed as a part of the Gamevasion during the Gamescom on the official Twitch-Channel of the Rocket Beans on friday, August 28 - 14.00 CEST!

We will also be streaming the "A new Civilization Update" together with developer and Community Manager Kai on our Twitch Channel from 15.00 CEST

Jul 28, 2020

Radiation Update | Available now!

Endzone - A World Apart - Assemble | Kizzle

Greetings, survivors!
Saudações, sobreviventes!
¡Saludos, supervivientes!

The fifth update for Endzone - A World Apart brings again two more buildings into play. The new additions are used to combat radiation. Previously, players repeatedly had problems with the growing radiation and also had difficulties protecting themselves against it. With the new changes and implementations it is now easier as long as you build a good infrastructure and invest some time in researching the new technologies. We also added two new languages and different keyboards layouts, and custom keybindings are now supported!

With this update we are migrating to a new savegame system. Your old savegame will not be compatible with this version. We hope that our new savegame system is more flexible and will no longer require us to break old savegame in the future. Also, you should notice slightly faster save and load times.

Controls: Players can now rebind all key mappings of the game based on their needs in the “Controls” menu found under “Options”.
Localization: Added Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
Localization: Added special characters for Turkish and Vietnamese language to font assets.
Visuals: Replaced all settler avatars with new and improved ones, providing a larger variety of looks and distinct differences between ages of settlers.
Buildings: A Decontamination Post has been added. It allows the player to clean contaminated goods that are stored in a logistics building. This new building produces Decontamination Kits, which are distributed among the inventories of buildings within its work area and clean resources from contamination.
Buildings: A Mine has been added that allows you to mine coal or iodine from mountains. Both ways of mining have to be researched in the Research Station. Iodine can be used to create Iodine Tablets, an effective way to treat your settlers' radiation levels.
Recipes: Added a new production recipe to the Medical Facility that allows to convert Iodine into Iodine Tablets. Iodine Tablets are consumed by settlers to free themselves from contamination. The production recipe is unlocked together with the Iodine Mining technology in the Research Station.
Technology: Added the technology “Mining Tunnel Construction”. Researching this technology heavily reduces the negative effect on the efficiency of mines that are placed close to each other.
Side Missions: Added 8 new side missions.
Expeditions: Added 4 new expeditions.
Graphic Options: Added settings to set the visual quality of objects.
Visuals: Added new ruins to the game.
Visuals: Added animations to some existing and new buildings.
Visuals: Added destruction effects to all ruins, when they are destroyed.
User Interface: Buildings of the same type are now highlighted during Build Mode. This effect can be toggled on or off in the game options in the Main Menu or using a shortcut on the keyboard (default key: ‘H’).
Technology: Added a maximum amount for Research Points. This is also reflected in the UI.
Glossary: Added new Glossary entries for the Decontamination Post, Iodine and Iodine Tablets.
Savegames: We added a completely new savegame system. This system speeds up saving and loading files significantly.

Some of the new settler avatars (16 in total with numerous variations)

The new Highlighting shows related buildings in a blue overlay

Engine Update: Updated our engine version from Unity 2019.2 to 2019.4 LTS. Being on this new version includes numerous bug fixes by our engine vendor. It also allows us to benefit from upcoming bug fixes in the future.
Savegames: The new system fixes wrong and spontaneous erratic behavior that could lead to broken or corrupted savegames.
User Interface: Assigning workforce to a profession using right click now assigns all remaining free settlers if the maximum possible amount is higher than the amount of free settlers.
User Interface: Advantages on Expeditions that require all settlers to apply to them are now highlighted correctly during the configuration of an expedition.
User Interface: Fixed several occurrences where buttons in the options of a building where wrongly hidden.
User Interface: Fixed an error that occurred when entering a share code without “#”.
User Interface: The share code input field now allows the correct number of characters.
User Interface: Position Markers on the minimap from previous session no longer consist in new sessions.
Visuals: Settlers now look into the direction of their task (e.g. when cutting down trees) to improve animation authenticity.
Visuals: Settlers should not have holes in their 3D representation anymore.
Gameplay: Resource piles will no longer be automatically transported to storage buildings but rather used if settlers require resources from them.
Gameplay: “Schroedinger’s Settlers” have been fixed. Demolishing a house and cancelling the demolition immediately could lead to “invisible” settlers. This has now been fixed.
Side Missions: Side Missions no longer throw an error if the Glossary was opened beforehand.
Tutorial: Fixed some wrongly locked or unlocked buildings.
Tutorial: Market quest now rewards coal masks.
Performance: Several performance optimizations to avoid stuttering.
Startup: When the game was opened for the first time it was possible to be stuck in a black screen when no button was pressed. This is now fixed.
Buildings: Settlers who walk to scrap piles or the Scrap Catcher now use correct paths which are not wrongly offset anymore.
Expeditions: A ruin with several story threads never spawned the last one. This has been fixed now.

Gameplay: Children in Sturdy Houses are born faster now. This prevents the issue that less children were born when upgrading to this house type.
Controls: Players with non QWERTY keyboards (e.g. AZERTY) can now play the game with the correct key mappings.
Gameplay: Settlers will now always use the nearest building that has a resource available instead of following a strict priority queue.
Visuals: Nights are now brighter.
Visuals: Changed the model for the derelict tank and removed the WW2 version that did not fit with the game's timeline.
Balancing: Settlers are now noticeably affected by contaminated water and food.
Balancing: Tweaked the work times of Tailors and Technicians to improve the output of tools and clothing.
Balancing: Increased the respawn time of wildlife.
Balancing: Minor balancing changes to some Side Missions.
Balancing: Researchers have a much larger inventory now, so they are able to supply resources for new technologies much faster.
Market: Markets now also accept refined resources like Metal or Electronics.
Tutorial: The tutorial has been slightly adjusted to introduce some of the new buildings and features.
User Interface: Assigning professionals in the inspector of a building now also allows you to right click the increase button in order to assign the maximum amount.
User Interface: The production limit interface in the Refinery has been reworked to avoid that increase and decrease production limit areas are misleading due to their position in the UI.
Building Placement: It is now possible to place buildings on parking lot ruins.
User Interface: Fields now show “Food” as a production limit instead of individual resources.
User Interface: Production Limits in the Production Limit Menu now update correctly if a production limit is changed in the inspector of a building.
User Interface: The tooltip, when hovering over a building in the build menu now shows the number of buildings of this type.
Expeditions: Several Expeditions now unlock Iodine Tablets as a reward. Iodine Tablets can be used by settlers to treat their individual radiation levels.
Expeditions: Added checkmarks for expeditions when progress is at 100%.
Expeditions: Added Iodine Tablets to some Expeditions as a reward.
Expeditions: Added a new option to the Nuclear Power Plant Expedition that allows you to go back one step.
Resources: Local piles will no longer be auto transported to storages. Instead they act like mini storages and your settlers take goods only when needed. The resources of these piles will now directly contribute to your global inventory.

Comparison of the brightness in the new patch vs. the old status

Gameplay: The tooltip for a Sturdy House is not describing that children are now born twice as fast.
Plantations: Changing a seed on a plantation is currently bugged and nearly impossible, because Plantations are rarely completely harvested. To change a seed you need to tear down the plantation. We are already working on a fix for that.

Decontamination Post

The Decontamination Post is the place where Decontamination Kits are produced by the new profession "Decontaminator", with which already contaminated food can be cleaned again. Any building with an inventory can receive the kits and thus remove the radiation. Note, however, that while Cultivated Fields and Orchards can hold food in their inventory, they do not count as buildings. That's why you should always supply a dedicated Warehouse with Decontamination Kits.

Mine

A Mine can be built directly on mountains. Research unlocks the branches "Coal" and "Iodine", which can only be mined individually in a single Mine.
Iodine can be used in a Medical Facility to produce Iodine Tablets, which settlers can use to reduce their existing radiation. Settlers can even become fertile again if the radiation is completely removed using Iodine Tablets!

We know that there are a few more things we need to address and we are listening to your feedback. We're trying to address all the important issues in a timely manner and make the game as a whole more understandable and fair. However, it is important to remember that Endzone - A World Apart is a survival game, so we have made it challenging with full intention.

- Your Team von Gentlymad & Assemble Entertainment

Changelog Version 0.7.7514.32672

Jul 1, 2020

Technology Update Patch #1

Endzone - A World Apart - Assemble | Kizzle

Greetings, survivors!

As we noticed that with the last update some things had to be fixed or changed after all, we now release a small patch. We hope that the changes will also solve some subsequent errors.

Audio: Added options for the audio feedback on settler deaths to the audio game options. Players can now decide whether they want to have audio feedback on unnatural deaths or all deaths or turn it off completely. Additionally players can set a delay that defines the amount of deaths before the audio feedback is played again.

Settlers: Fixed a Bug where professionals wouldn’t carry the amount of resources they were supposed too (e.g. when transporting boar meat from the dead animal to their Hunting Lodge).
Research: Research Station now only generates knowledge when it’s supposed to.
Buildings: Fixed a Bug where dead settlers were stuck in buildings.
User Interface: The technology window and the inspector of the Research Station now update correctly when research was interrupted and a new one was started.
User Interface: Using the back button during Expeditions now selects the correct Dialog Option when entering the previous Option Group.
User Interface: Share codes now follow a new format and include research and rain director game settings. Old Share Codes will no longer work. Future changes to the share code however should no longer break.
User Interface: The inventory dialog at ruins during expeditions no longer shows resources that have an amount of zero.
Visuals: Building emission maps are now only active at night when electricity is available.
Fields: Hemp Fields now use the Production Limit for Hemp instead of Food.

Balancing: The sturdy house now inhabits 4 Adults and 6 children to prevent a complete stop of population growth.
User Interface: The inspector of the Research Station now highlights resources that are currently missing in red.
User Interface: Rainwater Collectors & Wells no longer display Cisterns/Water Towers as a requirement.
Feedback: Corpses within the area of influence of a cemetery are now highlighted.
Roads: Dirt Roads and Paved Roads are now highlighted differently while in Build Mode.
Town Center: The initial stage and first upgrade of the Town Center now have increased storage capacities.

Jun 24, 2020

Technology Update | Available now

Endzone - A World Apart - Assemble | Kizzle

Greetings, survivors!

After the first Updates that mainly involved Balancing and introducing long time planned mechanics, we are now introducing the Technology Tree and the associated Research Station, bringing research to the world of Endzone while adding several new buildings based on your feedback. We also added 2 new Scenarios, 5 new Side Missions and 6 new Expeditions. Additionally, another major aspect was the adjustment of the erratic and inefficient behavior of the builder profession. Builders now act way smarter and help you build exactly the city that you want to have. We sure also did take our time to iron out bugs and issues players reported over the month.

Gameplay: We made profound changes to settler behavior and especially the Builder profession. Builders will now exclusively deliver resources to constructions sites. Please see the Tweaked section for in-depth info.

Buildings: Added a small and medium version of the Warehouse that can be upgraded into a large Warehouse. Each upgrade has more capacity.
Buildings: Added a Hemp Weaving Mill that produces Cloth from Hemp.
Buildings: Added a Wind Turbine that constantly produces power but can only supply a small number of buildings. The Wind Turbine is also the first building that uses building animations.
Buildings: Added A Scrap Catcher that is able to catch scrap whirling around during sandstorms.
Buildings: Added a Research Station that enables the player to research new buildings, formulas or other technologies. Accumulate Knowledge by performing expeditions, solving certain Side Missions or by assigning Researchers. New buildings can be unlocked in the Technology Tree.
Buildings: The Shelter can now be upgraded into an upgraded Shelter.
Feature: Added a Technology Tree that the player can use to perform research. The Technology Tree is only a first version and will be enhanced in future updates.
Content: 6 new Expeditions were added.
Content: 2 new Scenarios were added.
Content: 6 new Side Missions were added.
User Interface: Added color schemes for radiation and water levels that can be selected in the Game Options Menu to assist with color blindness (let us know other color combinations, so we can add them as an option)
User Interface: Added Glossary Entries to all new buildings
User Interface: Added descriptions to Scenario Medals that roughly describe what to do to reach a medal
Achievements: Added 2 new Achievements for both new scenarios.
Game Options: Added new Game Options for Research and Rain Contamination Director. The Research Game Options include a ‘Legacy’ option that unlocks all buildings that were available to the player before this update from the start.

- Different color schemes for colour-blind people -

- Radiation Heatmap switching through an alternative color scheme -

Performance: Opening the Survival Handbook will no longer result in freezing the game for a few seconds.
Audio: Typewriter sound effect in settler dialog is now stopped when the window is closed before it finished
Audio: Fixed volume spike at the start of the game.
Audio: Click sound spamming of buildings and dialogues is now prevented.
Graphics: Fixed object clipping/popping when zooming in/out for the first time.
User Interface: Fixed Minimap Position Markers on minimap resizing.
Save Games: Fixed housing logic for old save games
Save Games: Fixed circular tasks for old savegames
Expeditions: Story Dialog now shows correct titles for already solved options
Side Missions: Effects when declining a Side Mission are now correctly triggered
Buildings: Fixed settlers standing in front of the medical facility when they are ill.
Buildings: Fixed mipmapping for potatoes.
Buildings: Irrigation Plant no longer stores infinite amounts of water when irrigation is set to “None”.
Gameplay: Several fixes to the task system.
User Interface: Fixed wrongly colorized building grid and highlighting of streets.
Pathfinding: Fixed error when upgrading buildings.
Effects: Effects are now correctly rotated on rotated buildings/ruins.

Gameplay: Improved the overall settler behaviour, primarily focussing on the profession “Builder”, as they were causing most of the trouble in your settlements. Builders should now work more efficiently regarding the construction of buildings. They will no longer change home with other settlers living near a construction site, which should boost the overall efficiency of your settlement. Builders will now also be responsible to deliver all resources needed for the construction of a building themselves, without the help of normal Settlers. Normal Settlers will only help to clear the construction site from trees or scrap and to dig up the ground in order to remove radiation.
Gameplay: If Game Options have droughts to be Always enabled, the game will start with zero ground humidity
Audio: Death sound now only plays on unnatural deaths. When a settler dies of natural causes (old age), the death sound is not played anymore.
Camera: Added small camera effect to main menu
Performance: Optimized rendering performance for all objects rendered by the camera.
User Interface: Reworked parts of the main menu (e.g. the scenario menu) to give a better overall user experience and to work better with different display aspect ratios.
User Interface: Added a UI element to show the fill level of all water specific buildings, including Irrigation Plants, Cisterns, Water Towers, Wells and Rain Collectors.
User Interface: Added better tooltips regarding disease spawning
User Interface: New save games will now also create a screenshot that is saved and displayed in the load menu.
User Interface: The intro can now be played at any time from the ‘Extras’ section in the Main Menu.
User Interface: The intro will only play on the first start of the game, instead of every time the game boots up.
User Interface: Toggling between buildings of the same type using the arrows in the building’s inspector now shows the index of the current building as well as the number of buildings of this type.
User Interface: Added camera movement that reacts to the mouse cursor in the main menu.
Balancing: A sturdy house now has space for up to 6 adults and 4 children.
Gameplay: Some buildings from former versions of the game are now part of the new technology tree.
Buildings: Added spot lights that illuminate buildings and their surroundings, when they are connected to electricity.
Buildings: Added light to well that will be activated when it is connected to electricity.
Buildings: Iterated over all buildings and added smoke effect to all chimneys
Buildings: Changed visuals for the Wheat Seed
Buildings: Changed visuals for the Cultivated Field
Buildings: Changed visuals for the Dirt Road
Buildings: Fields will now always be harvested 100% once harvesting starts. This fixes cases where fields might have 1-2 seeds left that will never grow and therefore block the whole field.
Bug Overlay: The “Oopsie” error window now has a button that directly opens an explorer window, so you can find the relevant files more easily.
Settlers: Settlers now have a random max age.
Gamedata: Migrated global progress save data from Config folder to the Save Game folder so it can be saved by any Cloud providers.

- New volumetric lighting for buildings powered with electricity -

World Tasks: World Tasks that collect more than one resource type are currently ignoring max caps at the moment. When using a World Task like gathering forest plants, which can be berries, mushrooms and herbs for example, the maximum cap for two of these resource types is ignored.
Share Codes: Map Share Codes currently don’t affect the new game options “Research” and “Rain Contamination Director”.
Scrap Catcher: The point where Salvagers pickup scrap from the Scrap Catcher is currently wrongfully offset.

Since the very first day of Early Access, people have constantly shared their ideas and plans for new buildings that could be part of the world of Endzone.
We discussed a lot, which buildings should find their way into the game based on the feedback and the necessity. Having the ability to conduct research and being able to use a Technology Tree for further advancements in the game, was an often called wish from you. Remember that this Update is only one of more Content Updates to follow. We are always collecting new ideas and listening to your feedback carefully.

The Research Station is the central building for research in Endzone. Through the Research Station and the new profession "Researcher" you can now generate Knowledge Points. These can also be gained through expeditions or by completing side missions.
As soon as enough knowledge has been gathered, a new building can be explored via the Technology Tree. This process takes a while and costs resources. You also need your “Researches” for conducting research.

The Scrap Catcher now gives you the chance to collect Scrap in your immediate surroundings. Emerging into the endgame your settlers were often forced to travel long distances in order to gather more scrap. The Scrap Catcher automatically catches Scrap It even catches more during Sandstorms. This mechanic makes Scrap now also an endless resource.

The Hemp Weaving Mill allows you to make cloth out of Hemp. Before it was only possible to generate Cloth from Scrap. This gives you another option to maintain the need for protective clothing from larger populations, without the need of Scrap.

The new Shelter Upgrade can hold more people while taking up the same space as the old Shelter. You can now fit 50 people into the Shelter giving you better options to extend your population without spamming new buildings too much. The new Shelter also benefits from being connected to the power grid giving a bonus on the overall confidence of your settlers.

We had a lot of feedback regarding insufficient storage space, thus forcing the player to spam Warehouses to maintain the heavy need from a large population. The Temporary Storeroom is now the first building to build to increase your storage. It has the same storage capacity as the Warehouse before, therefore not changing the feel for the Early Game at all. With the two additional upgrades you get 10.000 or even 15.000 units of storage space.

We also introduced a new road type, the Paved Road. It gives you a significant speed bonus on the Movement Speed of your settlers. We also overhauled the visuals for the old road type (Dirt Road) to make them more distinguishable.

The Wind Turbine is a new electricity building, giving you a constant delivery of power for a small amount of buildings. The Wind Turbine can generate electricity all by itself, even at night and has no need to be connected to a Battery. The building itself can provide a lot less electricity than a Solar Collector, but can also be built with a lot less resources.

Builders and construction sites have been a topic since the very first day of Endzone. It constantly appeared, that builders did not prioritize buildings as they should, or better said as the player thought they would. This quickly could lead to a downward spiral of your settlement, since crucial buildings just were not built anymore, important steps or planning ahead did not work out at some point and drove the settlement into the abyss. Builders are now responsible for transporting resources to the construction site and will immediately take care of the construction. The "Build Next" button now works as you would expect. Immediately after pressing it, current orders will be cancelled and the construction of the building will take first priority. Builders also don’t change homes as quickly as before and will stay in their building profession.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0laZ5T-6x60

Jun 19, 2020

Content Update Teaser

Endzone - A World Apart - Assemble | Kizzle

Greetings, survivors!

It's a bit early to give too many details about the next patch, but we can already make some statements and talk a bit about the upcoming content.
The upcoming update will include a number of new content and buildings for the first time. We are also expanding existing systems like the Scenarios, Side Missions and Expeditions to bring more variety into the game.

Even though the focus this time was on new content for the game, we continued to listen to your feedback and made some adjustments to make the game feel more enjoyable and optimized based on things you told us or had discussions about with us. Of course, a number of bugs have also been fixed and other issues have been resolved.

Additional Buildings and Upgrades

Although we have already talked about the new buildings that will find their way into the Endzone in the last stream, we reserve the surprise for ourselves and don't reveal too much. A total of 7 new buildings will be integrated and the game will be expanded with a new mechanic, among other things. Down below you find a teaser of a new building. Do you have an idea what it could be and how it works?

Additional Side Missions, Scenarios & Expeditions

Of course we also want to expand existing systems continuously. For this update we plan to add a handful of new missions, a few new scenarios and new stories for the expeditions.
Some of the existing ruins will now be properly integrated into the game and can be played like existing story ruins.

Settler Behavior

Another major aspect of the new update will be the behavior of the settlers. Currently, it feels like the player has little control over the build order and the amount of time a build order can take.
This leads not only to confusion for new players, but also to frustration for veterans who are familiar with indiscriminate action.
In the upcoming update, settlers will only be used for orders and the removal of building areas Builders will now independently transport resources to the construction site and start building as soon as all resources are available. In this context the "Build Next" button now also works much more reliably. This means, however, that many more builders must actually be present in the profession to complete all orders reliably. Free settlers now have less influence and therefore do not interfere with the game anymore, but work as intended as a backup or automatic exchange when a settler dies.

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- Your Team from Gentlymad & Assemble Entertainment -