Friday 23 December 2011

Xmas Exp

Seeing as it's Christmas we're also going to give everyone an extra +50% EXP until Boxing Day. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas Dead Frontier!

The Dead Frontier staff and I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We hope you enjoyed playing Dead Frontier this year as much as we enjoyed developing it. 2012 promises to be an exciting new year with many awesome new features coming to the zombie infested streets of Fairview. Stay tuned for updates!

Also, we'd like to remind everyone that the Corpse Grinder will only be available until the end of December, so if you were planning on grabbing one now is the time to do so.




Check it out in the Credit Shop:


Best Wishes From,
Neil (AdminPwn) and all the Staff at Dead Frontier

Friday 2 December 2011

Stat Boosters

We've just added Stat Boosters to Dead Frontier. These shots will grant your character either +35% damage, +35% run/walk speed, or +50% EXP for a full 24 hours. You can even take one of each to get all 3 bonuses at the same time!





Check them out in the Credit Shop:
http://bit.ly/tWsQQa

Wednesday 30 November 2011

Corpse Grinder

To celebrate Christmas 2011 I've just released a new Limited Edition chainsaw. The Corpse Grinder is the most powerful chainsaw in the game, and will only be available until December 31st so get it while you still can!




Check it out in the Credit Shop:
http://bit.ly/frN5dD

New baby on the way

Just a quick heads up. My 2nd son is due to be born any day now, so it's quite unlikely that I'm going to make any significant progress on DF over the next 4 weeks or so (if it's anything like last time, I won't be sleeping *at all* in December).

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Awesome zombie cake

Not really anything to do with development, but figured I'd mention this since it's zombie related. Today was my 25th birthday, and my wife surprised me with an utterly epic zombie cake. Here are some pics:







Okay, now that I've shown the world what it looks like, it's time to eat it. Om nom nom...

P.S Yes my wife calls me Boo Boo.

Monday 31 October 2011

Happy Halloween!

To celebrate Halloween today, we're giving everyone double their normal EXP for the next 24 hours. Enjoy!

In other news as I'm sure most of you already know, Dead Frontier now:
  • Has some cool music by Brodie Bowie in the Inner City.

  • Has weather cycles, including rain, fog, daylight and moonlight.

  • Has been updated to from Unity 2.6 to Unity 3.4, this should make the game much prettier whilst also giving better performance for the majority of people. It also means when Unity 3.5 arrives, we'll be able to upgrade right away. Unity 3.5 should give us yet another major performance boost for any computer with more than one processor core (that means basically any computer made in the last 4 years).

  • Has non-browser caching. This essentially means that you'll only have to reload the game client when a new update comes out (approx, 1-2 times per month). This will be a big improvement for people with slower connections.

  • Memory usage of the game has been reduced from around 1GB to just 400-500mb, which will help those with older systems.

Unfortunately I didn't finish getting those 40 new missions implemented due to being sidetracked with the above things. However I will now be adding those very soon.

Saturday 15 October 2011

Corpse Carapace and Corpse Mask

To celebrate Halloween 2011 we've just released some cool limited edition equipment: the Corpse Carapace and Corpse Mask. They are only available until November 10th so get them while you can!



Check them out in the Credit Shop:
http://bit.ly/frN5dD

Tuesday 4 October 2011

Let the grinding commence!

It has begun. Everyone will receive triple EXP for the next 8 hours. Enjoy!

Monday 3 October 2011

Triple EXP Tuesday!

Tomorrow evening (Tuesday 4th October 2011) from 2pm EST until 10pm EST all characters will receive 3x their normal EXP.  This includes normal exp from zombies, boss exp, mission rewards and OA bonuses :)

Why am I doing this? Well we really want to see how well our servers can handle an abnormally large number of players. We want to get literally as many people online as humanly possible during that time, so we can find any weaknesses. This will mean that in the future a large spike in player numbers will be less likely to cause problems for our servers, which will make the game far more enjoyable for everyone.

So, make sure you're online tomorrow between 2pm and 10pm EST! And if you have any friends who have a DF account, be sure to tell them about this mini-event :)

Times around the world:
11am until 7pm PST (West Coast USA)
12pm until 8pm MDT (Central USA)
1pm until 9pm CDT (Central USA)
2pm until 10pm EST (East Coast USA)
7pm until 3am GMT (UK)
8pm until 4am GMT+1 (Western Europe)
10pm until 6am GMT+3 (Russia)
5am until 1pm AEST (Wednesday 5th) (Australia)

Friday 23 September 2011

Quick update

Just thought I'd let you guys know where I'm up to at this stage:

Right now I'm putting the finishing touches to the next batch of 40+ missions and they should be released before the end of the month. I'm also working on bug fixes, optimizations and smaller improvements to the game/site. In addition I'm going to be adding some music and day/night/weather cycles to inner city in a couple of weeks.

I expect to begin serious work on interiors/barricading in late October or early November.

Not all that exciting, but I thought I'd mention that I've commissioned a new 3D rendered cinematic intro, which I expect to be ready sometime in December.

Some of you were wondering why the beta warning was removed from the login page. I'm not trying to say that the game is finished, because it definitely isn't. I just don't want new players to feel scared that they're going to lose their account at some point, or that they're going to encounter tons of bugs, because that isn't the case. The game is actually very stable at this point.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Missions

Just a quick post to say that missions have now been released for all players. Enjoy!

Friday 19 August 2011

Blog Changes

I've decided I'm no longer going to post a daily list of what I've been doing/working on. I recently explained that I had been sick for two days and that prompted certain people to post negative comments, implying that I should in fact be working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and that being sick in apparently unacceptable.

I've worked incredibly hard these last couple of months, and my 'reward' for it is yet more abuse and negative comments. It's clear that even if I was working 22 hours a day, 365 days a year a good proportion of you would still be unhappy. I should of known, because that's exactly how it's worked since I first started making this game.

Here is one thing I'd like to note. If you're not happy with the game as it stands, then please, PLEASE, don't spend money on it. You aren't 'pre-ordering' a feature that I'm going to create in the future. In addition, spending money on DF does not make you my boss. When you buy credits or a GM, you are paying for those things as they exist in the current game at this time, nothing else.

I'm going to continue working on missions, fixing bugs and adding new ones until the end of this month. Then in September I'm going to work on fixing the other major long-term flaws with the game such as lag, mutiplayer sync, high memory usage etc and convert the project from Unity 2.6 to 3.4 whilst implementing non-browser caching for faster loading times.

After that I'm not making any promises. I'll probably work on interiors and barricading, but I'm not going to post an ETA. It'll be done when it's done.

Monday 15 August 2011

Week starting 15th Aug 2011

Monday:
Missions
Yet more bug fixes

Tuesday:
Bug fixes

Wednesday:
Not feeling too great so took today off.

Thursday:
Same as Wednesday, though starting to a feel a little better. Should be able to get some more missions done tomorrow.

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Week Starting 8th of August

Monday
Weekend break

Tuesday
Missions

Expecting to have enough done for GMs to play by sometime this evening.

Tuesday Evening
Missions

Just a few minutes away now. Thought I should mention that the final artwork is not yet ready, so you will see a lot of ugly placeholder stuff. That of course will be sorted as soon as the final artwork is done. I'd also like to note that we literally only have 6 missions at the moment, 2 at Nastya's, 2 at Fort, 1 at Precinct and 1 at Dogg's. Of course many more will be added in the next few weeks. Due to the small number of missions you'll only be able to do one per day for the time being.

Wednesday
Mission bug fixes and improvements

Some people are complaining about bugs, difficulty/balance and some issues with seeing your briefing etc. Rest assured I'll be addressing all of these problems. Remember that this is a brand new feature and is likely to have these kind of teething issues for the next couple of weeks or so.

Thursday
Missions

Friday
Went on an assault course activity day with Ian (Xaelath). Managed to dislocate my right arm again. Went to a hospital where instead of slowly manipulating the arm back into the correct position (like they did the last two times), the doctor decided to violently force it into place as quickly as he possibly could. It didn't work, and the end result was the worst pain I've felt in my life (despite being on 10mg of morphine), and judging by how my arm feels today they did some extra damage in the process. In the end I had to be sedated for them to get it back in. I'll make sure not to go to that hostpial again.

Luckily I can still use it enough to continue adding missions.

Saturday
Missions
Bug fixes

Sunday
Missions
Bug fixes

Tuesday 2 August 2011

Week starting 1st August 2011

Monday:
Missions

Tuesday:
Missions

On Friday I'll be going away with Nastya for a long weekend. I was originally planning to release missions for GMs before then. Even though I think that's still possible, it would be pretty risky. I wouldn't have time to thoroughly test everything so there could be a lot of serious bugs. Normally that's not a big issue because I'm around to fix problems as soon as they occur. But being away will make this impossible (Nastya will kill me if I spent our weekend working!). So I've decided it'll be better to wait until I'm back. The ETA is now sometime Tuesday (or possibly Wednesday) next week.

Wednesday:
Missions

Thursday:
Missions

Friday+Saturday+Sunday:
Weekend break

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Week Starting 25th of July 2011

Monday:
Missions

Tuesday:
Missions

Wednesday:
Random bug fixes
More anti-cheat stuff

Thursday:
Woke up today to find my hard disk had died. Luckily I have everything backed up online, but it's still going to delay me a bit. Have to wait until tomorrow for a new disk to be delivered, and once that's in it's going to take a while to download all 51GB of data back on to it. There are still some bits a pieces for missions I can get done while I'm waiting however.

Friday:
New hard disk eventually arrived (was supposed to be before 9am but didn't get here until 3pm). Since then I've been fighting with the stupid online backup service's data restore process. Got the first 10GB of data, only for the software crash. After restarting the restore it went right back to the beginning >.< I'm now attempting another restore method. At this rate I probably won't have all my necessary files until the end of tomorrow. Unfortunately all of this is beginning to cut a serious hole in my schedule as there isn't much else I can do until my files have been restored. So looks like there is going to be a delay on the missions being released.

Saturday:
Managed to get my most important DF files downloaded overnight so was actually able to get quite a lot of mission stuff done today after all. Aiming to have something ready for GM's in the next few days.

Sunday:
Missions

Thursday 21 July 2011

Week starting 18th July 2011

Monday:
Missions

Tuesday:
Bug fixes
Took Nastya to see last Harry Potter film

Wednesday:
Was with Nastya in hospital most of the day. Not going to go into detail but was all fine in the end.

Thursday:
Tweaked exp again
Bug fixes
Missions

Friday:
Missions

Saturday:
Missions

Sunday:
Missions
Took Matty to the park

Monday 11 July 2011

Week Starting 11th July 2011

Monday:
More bug fixes for anti-cheat

Tuesday:
Mission artwork specifications
Started mission programming

Just in case anyone is interested, here is a rough mock up of what the mission/event briefing screen might look like:



Wednesday
Mission system

Thursday
Mission system

Some of you asked about an ETA for the missions. I expect to have the core system finished sometime around the 25th of this month. Although, we wouldn't have any proper missions created, so I'd expect another week after that before we would have enough for things to be playable. So GMs should have access to some missions at the start of next month, and everyone else will get them a couple of weeks after that.

Friday
Mission system

Saturday
Mission system

Sunday
I'm spending today making some changes to the game.

- Made it impossible for other people to see your credits and inventory contents. This was a response to complaints about privacy.

- Raised the exp required for levels 30+. The sudden surge in the number of level 200 characters was a wake up call that the exp rate had gotten a bit too high. Once missions are released it'll be possible to gain even more, so something had to be done to stop the game getting too easy.

- Level 200s now have permanent access to the Dusk shop. This a response to complaints that anyone with a lot of real life commitments would never be able to dedicate an entire week to winning entry into the Dusk shop, and therefore would never be able to have the best equipment in the game. So instead it's now possible to eventually get the Dusk gear by levelling less frequently over a greater period of time.

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Week Starting 4th July

Monday:
Anti-cheat continued

Tuesday:
Anti-cheat continued

Wednesday:
Anti-cheat finished =)

Thursday:
PvP kill logging
Bug fixes for Anti-Cheat

Friday:
Dentist appointment
Weight training
Bug fixes for Anti-Cheat

Saturday:
Bug fixes for Anti-Cheat
Mission system planning

Sunday:
Bug fixes for Anti-Cheat
Took son out for the rest of the day

Monday 27 June 2011

Week starting 27th June 2011

Monday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued
- Went to little brother's family b-day party (yes two parties)

Tuesday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued *yawn*

Wednesday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued

Looks like anti-cheat is going to take a few days more than expected. So, might not be able to start on missions until around the 4th of July. (I said "start on missions" but actually I'm not doing it from scratch - I already did about half of the code for it earlier in the year)

Thursday:
- Took Nastya out for the day
- Weight training

Friday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued

Saturday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued

Sunday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued

Thursday 23 June 2011

Week starting 20th June

I've decided to note when I've spent a significant amount of time during a day not working on DF (2 hours or more). It's not much good saying "I worked on X" today, if it was only 20 minutes and the rest of the day was spent watching TV. So going to be adding some personal stuff in there too.

Monday:
- Finalized contracts with UltimatePay
- Planned anti-cheat overhaul

Tuesday:
- Started work on the anti-cheat overhaul

Wednesday:
- Added new payment system to replace BMTMicro (UltimatePay)

Thursday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued
- Went to little brother's sports day

Friday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued
- Weight training

Saturday:
- Anti-cheat overhaul continued

Sunday:
- Chaperoned little brother's birthday party

Tuesday 17 May 2011

New weapons

We've just released a whole new bunch of epic weaponry. These powerful weapons can either be bought in the Credit Shop or looted in the end zone. In addition there are several new Dusk weapons available for those who win the weekly Top PK or Top Survivor competition. Go check them out at http://www.deadfrontier.com

Monday 11 April 2011

It's Easter =)

To celebrate Easter 2011 I've released a new set of limited edition items - Easter Eggs. Each egg contains one random piece of equipment, which is guaranteed to be worth substantially more than the cost of the gift itself. There are two types, standard and elite which are now available from the Credit Shop.

This amazing deal will finish on the 1st of May 2011, so hurry up and get them while you still can!

Wednesday 9 March 2011

New zombies and boss loots are out!

Please note that they are probably unbalanced and there may be some bugs. Of course I'll fix these problems up over the next few days.

Enjoy!

Saturday 5 March 2011

Yes, it's been way more than the 'few days' I originally quoted. Sorry about that everyone. The update is coming soon. Part of the reason for the hold up is that instead of just adding a couple of new enemies I've decided to add them *all*, along with all their special abilities.

Aiming for mid next week now. Please don't kill me.

Thursday 24 February 2011

Okay, it looks like I'm going to be unable to get the non-browser caching finished so soon after all. I'm having a lot of problems with it. Going to add a couple of new enemies instead.

Monday 21 February 2011

In a day or two I'll be releasing an update containing the following things:

- Boss loots
- Tons of bug/glitch fixes (think I got them all this time :P)
- Non-browser caching

That last one means that once you complete the loading screen once, you won't see it again unless an update happens (which from now on will probably be roughly once every month) or you decide to manually clear your Unity cache. This should make the game a lot more enjoyable for those will slower connections.

New enemies will follow shortly after that.

Monday 10 January 2011

Recent updates

There has been quite a few updates to the game in the last week or so.

The first of which is the Arena. Accessible from every outpost is now a PvP Arena where you can fight without needing to worry about maintenance costs for your character. When you die or leave the arena, you health and armour are restored back to full. You also don't lose any cash or exp when you die, and death in the Arena does not count for winning the Top Survivor award. The idea of this is to allow people to PvP for fun. You still get PvP points in the Arena, but only 1/4 what you'd get from fighting in the Inner City.

The other major update is to the Credit shop. Prices have been significantly reduced across the board. In addition, I have also removed the Gau-19. It may come back at a later date, but for now it is 100% unavailable for purchase.

Gold Memberships have had their benefits boosted significantly. They now only need 5 seconds to revive after death, and gain double exp (rather than the previous +25%). They also have even higher looting chances than before.

And finally, assault rifles and heavy machine guns have had their damage boosted slightly. Excluding the GAU, I felt they were underpowered when you considered the ammo costs. Hopefully this should balance things out more.