The snow is pretty much feature complete now. We’ve got snow blanketing every kind of shape, model entity, etc in the game now (as far as I know anyway) and snow does NOT snow inside buildings unless you break a hole in the roof, nor do particles snow inside buildings either. It’s pretty amazing and adds so much immersion. We still have to get cold weather survival in but at least the visuals are there and look awesome.

I took a spin on the minibike which now has physics and ik on the handlebars. If you don’t know what IK is, it stands for inverse kinematics and means the hands are linked to the handlebars so when the handlebars move the characters arms move with it. It looks pretty cool. I cruised around, ran out of gas, put more gas in it. I decided to build a ramp and see if I could get any air with it but I fell to the ground pretty fast. So I changed my motor out to the best one I could get and tried again, and I got quite a bit of air! So I played around with various ramps and had fun making my own little tracks and seeing what kind of jumps I could pull off.

After trying out various stunt jumps I decided to go for a nice cruise in the country to see how it felt just cruising down the roads. I was scouting out for towns and POIs and it was lots of fun finding everything so fast. You can off road and go up hills (slowly but you get up them). For a first programmer version I was very impressed with it, big kudos to Joe who worked hard on the physics, it feels great already. The steering isn’t very responsive but I had lower quality handlebars. Handlebars determine how fast you can turn. So this bike can be upgraded and you can improve a lot of aspects about it so don’t gripe when your first minibike sucks, the 600 quality one is a blast.

Will the minibike be worth building? Absolutely! It is a serious game changing experience. Driving through snow storms was just absolutely jaw dropping. Imagine the envy of other people on the server when they see someone has crafted one and they drive by on it and get the air drop first Or you die and lose your stuff and need a ride to get your gear back, the guy on the minibike can be the hero. Lots of interesting game play for sure!

Steel forts are here! Now you can upgrade reinforced concrete with a ton of steel into the ultimate zombie proof (nearly) base! Oh and it’s raining Rain sounds are in and I have to say it feels pretty ominous

Joel Huenink

Just some more random screens from tonight’s testing session. The new ambient sounds and winds really add to the tension. It dawned on me as I struggled on day 6 that we finally have a slow game. I remember back in alpha 1 you could have all the best stuff in two hours. It really feels rewarding finding good loot and slowly building up your character and fort. I have a pistol that broke on me, very limited ammo for my blunderbuss and a half decent club I found. I still can’t forge but I found an axe at a hardware store so hopefully tomorrow I can get enough wood to build some walls around my shoddy house I took over.

I love the emergent game play lately. A wandering horde came to the town not long after I cleared it of walkers and I lured them to a barn only to see six dogs come rushing me. I think Robert got caught in the middle of it and I heard his character screaming in the distance. Better him than me I thought as I went back to Woodburry to loot some more. Building a minibike is nowhere in sight yet, but I did find an engine. That is a start, I will keep dreaming of riding it one day. I’ll keep you guys posted, I plan on playing this game up until release.

Joel Huenink

Well I hadn’t really planned on showing any screenshots but I ran into such awesomeness testing bug fixes I grabbed a few. We have these little desert oasis that have ponds and small lakes and scattered around them are grass and green shrubs. I also grabbed one shot of a rainstorm in the wastland. We need to improve the rain particles a bit, but it looks better with the game running.

"Joel Huenink"
We’ve redone the leather armor and it’s looking pretty awesome. You will also be able to wear coats like dusters over this armor. Cold and hot weather survival is in, and what you wear makes a big difference in survival. I will do a video showing all the detail we’ve put into the weather system because it’s too deep to try to explain any other way.

"Madmole"
Hopefully we can roll them all out together, but if I were to be conservative, I'd say we'd add traders first.